Robert Jackson, CEO

201 Humphrey Street
P.O. Box 386
Marks, MS 38646

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The Mississippi Delta stretches from the lobby of the famous Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, to Catfish Row in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Here, on some of the richest land in the nation - where cotton, soybeans, milo, and catfish grow - live some of the poorest people in America; people whose families have been poor for nearly two centuries.

Quitman is only one county in the Delta, but is an entire world away from the local flotilla of riverboat casinos drawing gamblers from Memphis, Little Rock, and elsewhere. In the decades from 1950 to 1990, more than half of the overwhelmingly African American residents left Quitman County. Compared to 1970's population of 15,900 people, only 10,117 remain today - and nearly 32 percent of these residents live in poverty. The majority of area residents are African American (68.6 percent).