E-Books →A Day I Ain't Never Seen Before Remembering the Civil Rights Movement in Marks, Mississippi

Set carefully within its broader historical context, the narrative begins with the founding of the town and the oppressive conditions under which Black people lived and traces their persistent efforts to win the rights and justice they deserved. In their own words, Marks residents describe their lives before, during, and after the activist years of the civil rights movement, bolstered by the voices of those like Joe Bateman who arrived in the mid-1960s to help. Voter registration projects, white violence, sit-ins, arrests, school desegregation cases, community-organizing meetings, protest marches, Freedom Schools, door-to-door organizing―all of these played out in Marks.
The broader civil rights movement intersects many of these local efforts, from Freedom Summer to the War on Poverty, from the death of a Marks man on the March against Fear (Martin Luther King Jr. preached at his funeral) to the Poor People's Movement, whose Mule Train began in Marks. At each point Bateman and local activists detail how they understood what they were doing and how each protest action played out. The final chapters examine Marks in the aftermath of the movement, with residents reflecting on the changes (or lack thereof ) they have seen. Here are triumphs and beatings, courage and infighting, surveillance and―sometimes― lasting progress, in the words of those who lived it.