VIRTUAL Barcelona

Abstract

Upon realizing that the impoverished Mississippi Delta community of Marks had lost touch with its historical role in the Civil Rights Movement, local officials reached out to a community design center to tell their town’s story. The goal of the project was to commemorate the historical event, while bringing economic development to the area through cultural tourism. The design center employed a variety of community engagement techniques, like collecting oral histories, to stitch together the events of the Mule Train, a pivotal part of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. Rather than commemorate the event by designing a museum, the team creatively addressed the community’s needs by creating a multi-modal cultural trail. The “Marking the Mule” trail helps Marks promote its history as a means of boosting community pride, while encouraging biking and walking in an obesity-ridden region. The team maximized limited grant funds to tackle multiple community needs, including the design and construction of wayfinding and trail signage. The team also master planned a trailhead park and provided in depth analysis of infrastructure improvements to execute the trail. This case study highlights the culture of a small Mississippi Delta community in the context of a larger national history. Other communities can benefit from Marks’s example by learning to identify their town’s cultural assets as a means of diversifying their local economy to include heritage tourism. This study also demonstrates how to identify and promote a community’s unique sense of place, catalyze its local economy by preserving local culture and promoting cultural tourism, and how to maximize benefits from limited funding to achieve multiple objectives.