An old tobacco barn, still standing on McIntosh Road in Williamsburg County, has given way to less production and new methods of processing what is grown, retired Kingstree editor and photographer Linda W. Brown observed recently.
Williamsburg County, which is about 75 miles north of Charleston, S.C., has a population of just under 34,000 people. Population peaked in 1950 at 43,807, but has dropped slowly since then.
About two-thirds of county residents are black, with almost all of those remaining being white. Only 2 percent of those in the county are of Hispanic descent. Some 32.8 percent of residents live in poverty, according to the Census. Of the county’s 1,921 firms, 36.5 percent are black-owned — a percentage that is three times South Carolina’s average.
Photo taken March 30, 2014, by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.