A Journey of Hope Remembered

The Mule Train, about 150 people in twenty mule-drawn wagons from Marks, Mississippi, was determined to make the nation aware of the plight of America’s poor. This was the start of the Poor People’s Campaign, created by Dr. King shortly before he was assassinated. Both The Mule Train and its origin is now mostly forgotten, but The Mule Train commemorates it in this collection of photographs by Roland Freeman and others accompanied by excerpts from local and national newspapers.

An article from NPR details how Dr. King first got the idea for The Mule Train:

“Edelman [Children’s Defense Fund founder] recalls King touring a Head Start program in Marks that lost its funding.

‘He saw a teacher, you know, carve up an apple and give it to about eight kids — a slice each — and he was in tears,’ she says. ‘He had to leave the center.’

Edelman brought members of Congress, including Sen. Robert Kennedy, to see the deprivation firsthand, but got little traction on poverty programs. She says Kennedy encouraged her to get King to put more focus on the issue. She says he loved the idea.

‘I told him that I’d just seen Robert Kennedy and he had seen the hunger of children in Marks,’ Edelman says. ‘Kennedy said bring the poor to Washington and he lit up like a lightbulb.’

From there King moved forward on organizing the Poor People’s Campaign.

‘The vision was that this mule train would go all the way from Marks Miss., the poorest hamlet in the poorest state of the country, all the way to Washington,’ says Georgetown University law professor Sheryll Cashin. ‘The mule and the covered wagons as a symbolic message of the black sharecropper.'”

To read the entire article, click here. For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

To Tell It Like It Is

Many people know about Fannie Lou Hamer’s impassioned speech delivered at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, but far fewer people are familiar with the speeches Hamer delivered at the 1968 and 1972 conventions, to say nothing of addresses she gave closer to home, or with Malcolm X in Harlem, or even at the founding of the National Women’s Political Caucus. The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer, edited by  is a collection of twenty-one of Hamer’s most important speeches and testimonies which are meant to highlight her skill as an orator in oft-overlooked situations.

This book includes speeches from many different parts of Hamer’s fifteen year career as an activist, including her responses to events such as a Vietnam War Moratorium Rally in Berkeley, California, and a summons to testify in a Mississippi courtroom. The speeches in this book are coupled with with brief critical descriptions that place Hamer’s words in context, and there are additional materials within the book such as the last full-length oral history interview Hamer granted and a recent oral history interview Brooks conducted with Hamer’s daughter.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Fannie Lou Hamer lives within the pages of To Tell It Like It Is, a collection of her speeches and interviews prefaced by a short biography. Those who knew her will know her better, and those who didn’t will meet a humane, relevant, inspirational leader who can inspire us all to action right now.”—Gloria Steinem

“The single best primary source anthology available for studying the grassroots sharecropper activist turned warrior”—P. Harvey (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs), CHOICE, January 2015 issue

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

In The Freedom Schools, Jon N. Hale discusses the Mississippi Freedom Schools, which were  formed during 1964 as part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer. These schools were started by educators and activists to provide an alternative education for African American students that would facilitate student activism and participatory democracy, and had a crucial role in the civil rights movement as well as the development of progressive education in the United States as a whole. Forming a political network, the Freedom Schools taught students how, when, and where to engage politically, shaping activists who trained others to challenge inequality.

This book is based on dozens of first-time interviews with former Freedom School students and teachers, and shows the side of the civil rights movement that is often looked over in favor of the stories of national leadership or college protesters. Students and teachers that attended the schools speak eloquently about the principles that informed their practice and the influence that the Freedom School curriculum has had on education, as well as offering key strategies for further integrating the American school system and politically engaging today’s youth.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Jon N. Hale’s work hits the mark! It is accurate and timely in refocusing our attention on the profound power of African American youth and education. The activists and young learners who made the Freedom Schools possible have greatly gone unsung. In the midst of imminent danger, they learned and experienced democracy while illustrating the efficacy of community participation in education. Hale rightly places them at the forefront of the struggle for freedom. His book reminds us of those who saved the nation’s soul.” — Stefan M. Bradley, author of Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s

“Hale’s groundbreaking examination of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s tireless efforts to provide free educational opportunities for Mississippi’s African American children is an often overlooked yet instrumental component of the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The Freedom Schools offers a greater understanding of the schools’ lasting legacy and the profound impact of the Freedom Schools on Mississippi’s black students as they later engaged in boycotts and school walkouts, influencing public school desegregation efforts and the civil rights movement.” — Sonya Ramsey, author of Reading, Writing, and Segregation: A Century of Black Women Teachers in Nashville

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.