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Former Sergeant Leads Destitute Tribe to Economic Prosperity, Self-Respect
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
By Rudi Williams
American Forces Press Service

Chief Phillip Martin of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians poses with the Choctaw flag in his huge office on the tribal reservation.
Image Credit: Rudi Williams -- AFIS.

"We sat up a good organization and applied for a lot of grants from the government. We put people to work and in training and started changing things for the better. Before that time, opportunities for the Choctaw people were very small -- almost none. People were poor and had no place to really call their own, except for the small parcel of land the federal government gave them in 1918."

CHOCTAW, Miss. -- AFIS
Gone are the days when about three-quarters of the people on the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indian Reservation were unemployed and one-third of them had no formal education. And gone are the days when Choctaws were relegated to a livelihood of sharecropping, labor-type jobs and welfare lines.

They were called the "worst poverty pocket in the poorest state in the nation."

Now, the unemployment rate is about 4 percent, below the national rate of 5.7 percent. And the average annual household income has jumped from less than $2,000 per year in 1962 to more than $25,000. More than 400 Choctaw youngsters are in college compared to the two or three who might enroll each year four decades ago.

The Golden Moon casino and hotel is just one of more than 20 business enterprises that have raised the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians from paupers to an economic powerhouse in two decades.
Image Credit: Rudi Williams -- AFIS.

The dramatic turnaround is the result of the determination, dedication to excellence, visionary leadership skills and business savvy of a former Air Force staff sergeant named Phillip Martin. The 76-year-old has held leadership positions in the tribal government for more than 45 years and has been the tribal chief since 1979. He's in his sixth consecutive four-year term as chief.

On March 13, 1926, Martin became the second baby born in the new U.S. Public Health Indian Hospital in Philadelphia, Miss., adjacent to the Choctaw reservation. Educated in the Bureau of Indian Affairs-run schools in the Tucker area of the reservation and in Cherokee, N.C., Martin followed the footsteps of his four brothers into the armed forces.
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2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

Dan