The Center for a Better South
A Collum’s Lumber Products worker smiles from a bird’s eye perch above the lumber and po9le manufacturing plant in Allendale, S.C., one of the six counties in the S.C. Promise Zone. Collum’s is an independent, family-owned wholesale timber business that buys timber to make top quality, sustainable wholesale lumber. More.
This old tenant farmhouse in wiregrass country along Champion Road in rural Worth County gives a lot of perspective about the decay in infrastructure across the rural South. The photo by VanishingSouthGeorgia.com‘s Brian Brown shows a rusting sink, a rusting washing machine and a sagging green chair as a rusted tin roof threatens to topple onto the porch.
Worth County is located between Albany and Tifton in the central part of South Georgia. The county is home to Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Every jar made is produced in the county seat, Sylvester.
The county had about 21,300 people in 2013, according to the Census with whites representing 68.7 percent and blacks being 29.6 percent. Some 22 percent of people live below poverty levels, according to Census figures.
Photo by Brian Brown from VanishingSouthGeorgia.com is copyrighted. Originally posted on this site in June 2014. All rights reserved
Kingstree, S.C., photographer Linda W. Brown remembers taking this picture last year in rural Clarendon County. They could be storage buildings or old tenant homes, she recalled.
Clarendon County has 34,357 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 population estimate. About half of the county’s residence are white; the other half are black. Some other statistics:
Photo taken in 2013 by Linda W. Brown and originally posted in September 2014. Copyrighted; all rights reserved.
It won’t be long before its time to pick cotton in rural counties across the South. This photo, by VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown, shows an old corrugated metal farm building on the plantation that includes the Mathew Sheppard Brinson house (1888) in Jenkins County, Ga.
Jenkins County, whose county seat is Millen, was home to 9,213 people, according to the U.S. Census in 2012, an increase of 10 percent from two years earlier. Almost 30 percent of residents live in poverty.
Photo by Brian Brown, 2013. Photo originally posted on this site in September 2014. All rights reserved.
High summer finds a crop in the field in front of an old barn in Hyman, a small community just outside Pamplico, in rural Florence County, S.C.
Florence County had 137,948 people, according to a 2012 Census estimate. Its poverty rate — higher in the rural areas than the county seat of Florence, averaged 19.4 percent in 2010.
Copyrighted photo taken and originally posted in August 2014 by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.
You can barely make out the old “Myers” signage on this old store in Stuckey, Ga., in this photo by VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown. It’s a whole lot easier to see “Liz” and “Tom,” two words in paste-on letters on top of the old sign on the rural Wheeler County store.
According to 2011 poverty estimates by the U.S. Census, Wheeler County, which had 7,421 people in 2010, had a 42.2 percent poverty rate. What’s remarkable about that is it is one of the few high-poverty counties where the overall rate is higher than the rate for children under 18.
About two thirds of the residents of the south-central Georgia county are white with the remaining almost all black.
Copyrighted photo taken in March 2010 by Brian Brown. This photo originally was posted here in August 2014. All rights reserved.
Yep, there’s a welcome center for UFOs in the heart of the Southern Crescent in Bowman, S.C., in rural Orangeburg County.
The saucer-shaped building is in the yard of Jody Pendarvis, who started building it in 1994, according to RoadsideAmerica.com.
Mount Pleasant resident Don Gordon snapped the photo on a detour through Bowman in an attempt to avoid traffic jam on Interstate 26.
Orangeburg County is home too more than 91,000 people, two thirds of whom are black. The county has a poverty rate of 24.5 percent. The City of Orangeburg, known for its gardens and historically black colleges, officially is home to 13,850 people and has a 31.3 poverty rate in 2012, but the greater area has more than 65,000 people.
Copyrighted photo was taken and originally posted in August 2014 by Don Gordon. All rights reserved.
This classic old public works building in Ehrhardt, S.C., illustrates how rural communities invested in infrastructure in decades past. But the broken windows highlight how some infrastructure is eroding and needs more upkeep to stay modern. Photo by Andy Brack. All rights reserved.
A familiar feature in many small towns across the South is the standard 1960s post office, like the one pictured here in Ehrhardt, S.C. With challenges faced by the U.S. Postal Service and reductions in population in rural communities, small post offices face survival challenges. Photo by Andy Brack. All rights reserved.
Across the South are fields of corn that are baking in the humid heat of summer. This field, with the silver roof of an old farmhouse in the background, is east of Denmark, S.C., along U.S. Highway 78. Photo by Andy Brack. All rights reserved.