A small town in the Mississippi Delta that has ties to the civil rights movement will soon be home to the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame.
Project planners hope to finish building the facility in the town of Marks in two or three years, Velma Wilson, director of economic tourism and development for Quitman County, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Marks is the county seat of Quitman County and has a population of fewer than 2,000 people.
“There is no other hall of fame in the world that is primarily focused and dedicated to the history of R&B music on a national scale,” LaMont Robinson, CEO of the NRBHF, said in a news release. “My vision to build a hall of fame to honor R&B and its contributions to civil rights, America, and the entire world is something that I don’t take lightly.”Marks appealed to Robinson due to its civil rights history. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The conditions in the cotton fields of Quitman County and other parts of the Mississippi Delta were the environment in which early civil rights activists and field workers produced music that's now identified as blues, gospel and R&B, project planners said. As of 2020, Quitman County had one of the 20 lowest median income levels of all counties in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.