By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
Admit it – you have it happen too; something just gets stuck in your mind, and you just can’t shake it. Maybe you can’t or maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you hold on tight because it means something that you don’t fully understand. Maybe it’s something that should never be forgotten. That’s the way it was for me with this photograph taken by nationally acclaimed photographer Jack Spencer in the 1990’s in Marks, Mississippi. I came across it online in 2018 while doing research on Mississippi, knowing I would be moving here. I emailed Mr. Spencer and discovered purchasing a “print” was not something my budget could handle, and so I did the horrible – I clicked on it and sent it to my printer. By that method, it was of poor quality, but I framed it under glass and have kept it on my desk in front of me ever since. 100 percent genuine Mississippi in oh so many ways.
On August 14, 2025, me and my friend Joe “Joe Cool” Sanders from St. Thomas’s Sandy Bottom, stood at the sight where the photo was taken approximately thirty years prior. You know that couldn’t just happen by itself. It took saints to intervene. Marks Mississippi is full of saints and a few of them selflessly marched in when we arrived on their doorstep unannounced.
We started at Delta Burial Corporation, 491 1st Street in Marks. This Black-owned funeral service is now celebrating it’s 100-year anniversary – no one is ever turned down due to their inability to pay. Mr. Shelton Leonard stopped what he was doing to look at the picture and quickly narrowed it down to either Walter or LA Stokes doing the posing. He started calling helpers on the phone to unravel the mystery. He soon gave us directions to the Stineray Diner in the neighboring town of Lambert, to meet Reverend Larry Smith and his wife Earnestine, who operate a full-scale professional services business co-located with the diner. More saints.
They proclaimed the man in the photo to be Reverend LA Stokes, a travelling evangelist, who passed around 2008. “It’s the baptismal pool where King wept,” says Mrs. Earnestine Smith. What was that, I asked? “In 1968, right before King was killed, he came to Marks. He wept when he saw the conditions in Marks,” she said. Sure enough, the internet is full of citations of Dr. King coming to Marks – the poorest county in the nation – by invitation of his friend Reverend Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and issued a call to action that a Poor People’s Campaign Mule Train should originate in Marks and go all the way to Washington, D.C. to demand economic and human rights – a completely multi-racial effort.
Just one of the citations quotes the great Marian Wright Edelman – Founder of Children’s Defense Fund – recalling 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. He had to leave the center,” per https://www.npr.org/2018/05/13/610097454/how-a-mule-train-from-marks-miss-kicked-off-mlks-poor-people-campaign.
Under the 107 degree feels-like heat last week, Reverend Smith who pastors Shady Grove M.B. Church, offered to show us to the sight and jumped in our car to provide the tour back in Marks. The generosity back at Delta Burial Corporation hadn’t stopped though. Mr. Leonard kept on calling folks and soon located Mr. Jerry Polk, stepson of Reverend Stokes. By the time he arrived on the scene, Reverend Smith had shown us the general area depicted in the photograph, but Mr. Polk – another saint – brought us back one street further off Cotton Street, to Cook Street – and about 40 yards down on the left at the end of the street, there it was – what was left of it – 57 years after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had stood there – and approximately 30 years after photographer Jack Spencer took the pictures.
Alongside the outdoor baptismal pool, I watched Reverend Smith closely. He was the elder in this group of men, all in our sixties. And then it came. He looked at me, gestured with his hand to the bottom of the pool and said, “this is where we came from.” I nodded in solemn acknowledgement then turned away slightly so he wouldn’t see the tears.
Back at the Stineray Diner, me and Joe Cool had the biggest and most delicious double-cheeseburgers ever, seasoned fries, and a couple of Coke’s for lunch – it was nearly 3PM. Calling Mr. Jerry Polk later, I asked his perspective on the visit. “That’s our traditions. I was very impressed to see the pictures. That was amazing to see my stepdad like that. Nobody ever comes down there to see it (baptismal pool) so I was proud to show it to you.” When telling Mr. Polk how grateful we were that he was available and willing to help us, he wouldn’t take an ounce of credit, “That’s God. He knows about timing. He uses people and He used me. He puts us in places.”
Those Mule Trains tried fifty-seven years ago, and we must never stop trying. So much blood, sweat, and tears. So much theft of peace and life. Why is it that certain groups – people with non-white skin – always have to strive so hard for basic equality and equity? Quitman County, where Marks is located, is now the 12th poorest out of well over 3,000 counties in America. Yet still, the people of Marks and Lambert stop what they are doing to help total strangers.
Be the first to comment