Spider lilies bloom across from Kerr-McGee Farm Center on Main Street in Sycamore, S.C.
These vibrant spider lilies were in bloom near a sidewalk on the grounds of town hall in tiny Sycamore, S.C., in Allendale County when we passed by in early October. A week later, the grass had been cut and the lilies were gone.
Sycamore, a village of about 180 people, is about 60 percent white with a 35 percent black community of residents. Unlike the whole of Allendale County with its almost 40 percent poverty rate, poverty is comparatively low at 10 percent in Sycamore.
The Center is drawing attention to the Southern Crescent, an impoverished crescent-shaped area stretching from Tidewater Virginia through the Mississippi Delta. Learn more by clicking on the tab in the navigation bar above.
This year, the Center has formed a broad, nonpartisan Work Group in South Carolina to discuss ways to reduce poverty and improve opportunities in the Crescent parts of the state, which is also known as the “Corridor of Shame.” More.
Most recently, the Center has worked with the University of South Carolina at Salkahatchie and the Southern Carolina Alliance on a six-county project that could bring millions of dollars of aid to poor counties in the southern part of the state that would grow jobs, improve economic development, reduce crime and make education better.
Your donations make a big difference to the center because it gives us the fuel to keep projects like the Work Group active. Thank you for your support.
We’re not really sure about the story behind this great, old vernacular house along the railroad tracks in tiny Cummings, S.C., a few miles southeast of Hampton. And while the house is boarded up and front door is open, it seems to still be getting some use as a storage area. No doubt, there a lots of stories that could be told about its better days.
Hampton County, located in the southern part of South Carolina, was home to 21,090 people in 2010, about 4,000 fewer than a century earlier. More. Some 22.6 percent of Hampton County residents live below the poverty line.
Hampton’s annual Watermelon Festival is the state’s longest, continually-running festival. The town of Hampton includes a brownfield of a former medical waste incinerator. More.
Note how the early morning sunlight made this old barn pop out of the shadows along S.C. Highway 264 near Jacksonboro, S.C., in rural Colleton County.
Along the edge of the Southern Crescent, the barn reflects a time gone by in a county that is poised for growth because of its proximity to Interstate 95 and the Charleston metropolitan area.
Walterboro is the seat of government in Colleton County. It is home to 38,153 people, 21 percent of whom live at or below the federal poverty level.
While the Old Sheldon Church isn’t technically in the Southern Crescent — missing it by being a few miles east of Yemassee, S.C., and the Hampton and Colleton county lines — it’s a fitting photo for a fall Sunday. With Spanish moss dripping from old oaks, the church dates to the mid 1700s and served as a symbol of the prosperity of South Carolina in pre-Revolutionary War days. Rebuilt later, it burned around the time of the Civil War.
These days, plantations line lazy rivers, but most people in this rural area are far from wealthy. Hampton County, for example, is home to about 21,000 people, some 22.6 percent of whom live below the poverty line. Colleton County, also nearby, has just over 38,000 people, 21 percent of whom live at or below the federal poverty level.
A bale of cotton (500 pounds) can make about 1,200 T-shirts, according to cotton.org.
Old King Cotton is bustin’ out all over the South, including in this field near rural Ruffin, S.C., in Colleton County.
According to Cotton USA, about a third of the nation’s cotton is grown in fields from Alabama through Virginia. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, South Carolina ranked 10th nationally in production of cotton by growing 587,589 bales of the crop. As a comparison, Georgia, ranked second to Texas, grew 2.7 million in 2012.
Photo taken Oct. 1, 2014, by Andy Brack. All rights reserved.
Run-down motel, Allendale, S.C. Photo by Michael Kaynard.
Perhaps this image is the perfect characterization of poverty throughout the Southern Crescent. Not only is the word “crescent” misspelled in the sign outside this seemingly-abandoned motel in Allendale, S.C. But upon close scrutiny, it’s clear people are actually living in the rooms of this dilapidated place.
NOTE: This photo originally ran in September 2013, but we’re republishing today to remind people about the depth of poverty throughout the Southern Crescent.
Rural Allendale County in South Carolina’s southwest corner as one of the Crescent’s highest poverty rates — more than 40 percent of people live below the federal poverty level. The median household income is about $23,000 a year — half of South Carolina’s average and well below the nation’s $50,000 average.
Better South President Andy Brack remembers seeing the “Goat Man” as a boy when in the back seat of a station wagon traveling between his father’s country cousins in Allentown, Ga., to nearby Macon, where his grandparents lived. You’d see him pushing a wagon filled with all sorts of junk. He was, in a word, a “character.”
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown has this to say about the photo he took in 2013 of the odd Washington County landmark: “Goat Town isn’t really a town and it never was, though you can locate it on a good map. It’s just down the hill from Deepstep, whose iconic old store is also associated with the Veal family. T. Jeff Veal III, who uses his grandfather’s old country store as a workshop to build custom furniture, explained to me that a large herd of goats was kept around the corner in years gone by and the name just stuck. I’ve been here a couple of times and it never ceases to amaze me; it’s widely popular with Georgia’s backroads photographers.” Photo is copyrighted by Brian Brown. All rights reserved.
We’re still trying to find out the history behind this grand house about five miles northwest of Holly Hill, S.C. where U.S. Highways 15 and 176 split. We’re told a family that just had a daughter (see if you can find the pink stork sign) is renovating it slowly. [We shared this popular photo first in 2013 and thought you’d like to see it again.]
UPDATE, 9/27/14: Our friend Lynn Teague of Columbia says her kin and friends call this the old Galphin House. Later she sent word that archives in Orangeburg identify the house as being built by the Rev. Richard Powers Galphin and Lillian Wells Galphin, who died in 1913 and 1935 respectively. She added that the land around Wells Crossroads likely belonged to the Taylor family more than 200 years ago. Thanks Lynn!
Holly Hill, which had about 1,300 people in 2000, is near the Santee Cooper lakes in Orangeburg County as well as Interstates 26 and 95. Thirteen miles south is the National Audubon society’s Francis Beidler Forest in Four Holes Swamp. It features the largest remaining stand of virgin bald cypress and tupelo gum swamp in the world. Also a few miles from Holly Hill are two large cement quarries.
Holly Hill is just one of the many towns in Orangeburg County, South Carolina’s largest. Some 91,476 people were thought to live in the county in 2012, according to the U.S. Census. Almost two in three residents are black. Some 24.5 percent of residents live below poverty.
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown sent along this picture of the old Parker Store (ca. 1927) in rural Wilkinson County in central Georgia.
Brown writes, “According to Keith Colson, Mrs. Pearl Parker opened this store in 1927 and operated it until her death in 1970. Her daughter, Henry Belle Whitaker, kept it open until 1980. I’m unsure as to the actual community in which it is located, but it’s north of Irwinton on US Highway 441.”
Today, Wilkinson County has fewer people (9,577 in the 2012 Census estimate) than it did in the 1940s (11,025 people). About three in five people are white, with most of the rest being black. Poverty is about 20 percent.
