The rode in the rain. They rode with shots fired at them. They rode with police escorts. They rode 500 miles. They rode for freedom.

A photo exhibit about the mule train riders, who in 1968 traveled from Marks, Miss., to Washington, D.C., to attract attention for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign, attracted about 100 people Sunday to the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St.

Their journey was the focus of Evanston’s 21st Annual Community Celebration of the Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“This (journey) was unfolding minute by minute,” said photographer Roland Freeman, who took many of the exhibit’s photos and curated the event. “It wasn’t some mass planning.”

With few luxuries and little shelter from those who opposed their mission, the wagon riders traveled up to the capital. Their journey took 45 days.

One picture shows a man injured by someone who forced a mule wagon off the road. In another, police escorts walk along a group of mule train wagons in Virginia.

But the exhibit also captured the hope many had on their journey.

A group of young Mississippi State University students held a banner reading “Good Luck in D.C.” in one photo. Young black girls of the mule train wagons dance and play in another picture.

“I think it’s terrible that the government didn’t provide more for poor people because they were black,” said Zenani Greenwell, 12, who attended the event.

Although Greenwell, daughter of Medill associate professor Ava Greenwell, said she has received good education about black history in school, other students have not.

“I don’t think all of them get a good education on African American history,” Greenwell said. Greenwell said she would like to be taught about less well-known details of history in school, like the mule train journey.

The event was “bittersweet” for Ald. Delores Holmes (5th), she said while at the exhibit.

“It brings back so many painful memories (about racial injustice),” she said.

Schools can never pay enough respect to people who have paved the way for civil rights in the past, said Evanston/Skokie District 65 Superintendent Hardy Murphy, who attended the event.

“If we don’t acknowledge where we’ve come from, we can end up going there again,” he said.

The program also included a tribute to Rosa Parks, by author and poet Janet Webb.

“She was, is and always will be more than a woman,” Webb said. “She became a symbol.”

Reach Lensay Abadula at [email protected]