Finch-Henry BCL Reginald D. Jackson attended a meeting this past Thursday in Marks, MS, at the city’s welcome center. Marks is the starting point of the Poor Peoples Campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968. The host of the meeting, Senator Robert L. Jackson, serves as CEO of Quitman County Development Organization. QCDO, as it‘s called, is a local non-profit organization, co-founded by Senator Jackson in 1977 that focuses on bringing community building resources to the Mississippi Delta. Due to its decades of excellent service in The Delta, Groundwork Project, founded by former United States Congressman Joseph Kennedy III, selected QCDO to be one of the first recipients in its second round of funding, of a general operating grant from its Organizer Grants Program. Congressman Kennedy, the son of U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, a grandson of U.S. Senator and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and grandnephew of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy and U.S. President John F. Kennedy, met with many of the community leaders and had an open discussion on issues, both political and economic, affecting The Delta. The group also offered solutions to those issues. Meeting attendants included, Mayor City of Marks Joe Shegog Jr., Project Coordinator Mississippi Delta Council Sam McCray, Quitman County Tax Assessor/Collector Alice Smith-Crowder, Founder and Executive Director of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights and Civil and Human Rights Attorney Jaribu Hill, Quitman County Administrator Otis Jones, Pastor Mount Zion Baptist Church Rev. Michael Jossell, Executive Director and Founder of Quitman County Arts Council Bernice Sykes, Quitman Community Hospital Chair and owner of Tri-County Insurers Carl Handy, Quitman County Election Commissioner, Dist. 4 Dwight Barfield, City of Marks Alderwoman Mercedes Staten, City of Marks Alderman and Vice Mayor Timmy Jamison, President of The Board of Supervisors Manuel Killebrew, Mississippi Delta Council for Farm Workers Executive Director Don Green, Quitman County Assistant Superintendent of Education Rev. Reginald Griffin, owner of Golden Years Home Care Agency and The Golden Connection Childcare and Learning Center Patricia Wright-Hankins, Chief Executive Officer of Aaron E. Henry Community Health Services Center, Inc. Aurelia Jones-Taylor, Groundwork Consultant Charles Taylor, Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights Board Member Aaron Green and, the aforementioned Senator Robert L. Jackson Dist. 11 and Finch-Henry BCL/WBL Reginald D. Jackson. Some of the meetings attendees were there 55 years ago, when U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy visited Marks in 1967 and, we at Finch-Henry are honored to have been invited to participate in his grandson’s first visit to Marks & The Delta.