Contact: Zack Plair
STARKVILLE, Miss.--The Carl Small Town Center at Mississippi State is receiving a $25,000 National Endowment of the Arts grant to develop a cultural master plan for a North Delta community.
To feature an interpretive trail and center for the city of Marks, the university-developed plan will highlight and explain civil-rights related sites in the Quitman County seat and beginning point of the historic 1968 Poor People's Campaign "Mule Train."
Organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--whose first president was Martin Luther King Jr.--the campaign featured a mule-pulled wagon train that began in Marks and ended in Washington, D.C. In the nation's capital, the slow-moving travelers eventually joined 3,000 others from throughout the nation assembled at "Resurrection City," a massive tent camp set up on the Washington Mall.
The D.C. event was a protest against living conditions faced by poor in the U.S. King twice had visited Marks and held it up as a symbol of America's downtrodden.
"The Mule Train was really the start of the Poor People's Campaign of 1968," said associate professor John Poros, the MSU center's director. "We are honored to be able to help the people of Marks make this piece of their history visible and present to visitors and community members through the NEA Our Town award."
Now in its fifth year of funding Our Town projects, the independent federal agency this year is awarding 69 grants that total almost $5 million. The individual awards range from $25,000 to $200,000.
The grant program supports creative place-making projects designed to promote local community art and creativity. Since the program's inception in 2011, NEA has awarded 325 Our Town grants totaling nearly $26 million.
"The Carl Small Town Center demonstrates the best in creative community development. This work will have a valuable impact on its community," Jane Chu, NEA chairman, said.
"Through Our Town funding, arts organizations continue to spark vitality that support neighborhoods and public spaces, enhancing a sense of place for residents and visitors alike," she added.
A research and service arm of MSU's College of Architecture, Art and Design and its School of Architecture, the Carl Small Town Center works to help improve the quality of life and create economic opportunity in small towns by improving their physical environments.
Fred E. Carl Jr., a major Mississippi State benefactor and the center's namesake, is a Greenwood resident who founded and served as the first president and CEO of nationally recognized Viking Range Corp. A one-time architecture major at the university, he endowed a statewide community design outreach program in 1979 that was renamed in his honor.
MSU, Mississippi's flagship research university, is online at www.msstate.edu, facebook.com/msstate, instagram.com/msstate and twitter.com/msstate.