Andy Brack – Page 11 – Building a better South

November 16, 2013November 16, 2014

Courthouse, Statesboro, Ga.

If you drive through the college town of Statesboro in mideastern Georgia, you probably wouldn’t think that 50.7 percent of residents lived in poverty, according to a five-year average by the U.S. Census. Sure, there are parts of town that have challenges, but it certainly doesn’t look like half of the residents are poor.

About the best we can figure is that the Census must have counted a lot of the 20,000+ students from Georgia Southern University as residents who live below the poverty level. And in a small town like Statesboro — population 29,779 — the number of college students, indeed, may make the community look statistically poorer than it is. (Anybody know differently or have a better explanation?)

The community is 54 percent white and 40 percent black. Its median household income is $19,554, according to the Census. If the Bureau is counting college students, the skewed demographics that Statesboro is experiencing can have a dramatic impact because it won’t be able to attract medium- and higher-end stores and shops. In a story told us by a newspaperman during a September visit, we learned that a major grocer won’t move to town because of Statesboro’s relatively low median household income. And that’s a shame because the community seems like it’s got a lot going for it — something the fast-food chains certainly have discovered.

Statesboro is the county seat of Bulloch County, which has 72,694 people (2012), two thirds of which are white. Just over 30 percent of residents live in poverty. The median household income for the county is $33,902.

Quickfacts on Statesboro and Bulloch County, Ga.
Wikipedia’s entry on Statesboro and Bulloch County

November 13, 2013July 24, 2014

Brack: Crescent South needs attention

Published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

By Andy Brack

There’s a vitality that runs throughout metropolitan Atlanta. Expensive cars are ubiquitous around Lenox Square. Neighborhoods in bedroom communities in Gwinnett and Cobb counties have good schools, libraries and a pretty good quality of life, despite some reminders of the Great Recession and, of course, traffic.

Vivacity, however, is harder to spot in a swath of agricultural Georgia that stretches across the middle of the Peach State, a rural sash of poverty where economic opportunity is tougher to find. The busiest place around might be a convenience store, as is the case in Leary in Calhoun County. Across the street is a full city block that has been abandoned. A couple of empty houses along Depot Street have been painted green or rusted red just to make them look less dilapidated.

Across the South, from Tidewater Virginia through the eastern Carolinas along I-95, through the middle of rural Georgia and Alabama and to the Mississippi Delta, about 4 million people live in economically distressed counties. On a map, the area is crescent-shaped. It has higher rates of poverty, unemployment, single-parent households, chlamydia, obesity and diabetes. It’s easy to see that these areas correlate with another map — that of where enslaved people lived in 1860.

This “Southern Crescent” is a clear remnant of plantation life, a region that has been the soft underbelly of the Deep South for generations. Today, 150 years after the Civil War, it’s time for the Crescent to start receiving the same attention that Appalachia did in the 1960s War on Poverty.

It’s not all doom and gloom in Crescent counties. Lots of people have good lives. Some forward-looking communities have taken extra steps to plan and innovate. In recent years, Vidalia in South Georgia has branded itself as the go-to place for sweet, delicious onions. Prosperity shows throughout the town, but even today, 25 percent of the people in Toombs County live in poverty.

To focus attention on endemic poverty throughout the Crescent counties, the Center for a Better South offers a Web site — SouthernCrescent.org — to showcase life in the region. We hope to bring together nonprofits and foundations to fund research and studies on how to coordinate better and smarter delivery of services to infuse more dynamism in the region. The center encourages the White House to create a special national study commission to recommend federal and state policies to raise living standards and promote opportunity.

This effort may not cost a lot of money. If various state and federal government bureaucracies get out of their comfort zones and work with engaged rural communities, they can figure out ways to create more economic opportunities.

Ride the roads of Crescent counties in Georgia. It’s clear that rural Southerners want more opportunities for their counties. Now is the time to get moving so they don’t get left behind even more.

Andy Brack is president of the Center for a Better South (bettersouth.org) based in Charleston, S.C.

November 12, 2013November 17, 2013

Bottle tree, Williamsburg County, S.C.

Bottle trees are artificial trees found throughout the South. While generally filled with colored bottles, this version outside a rural Williamsburg County home features a nice vase as well as colored plastic bottles — something we’ve never seen on bottle trees.

According to Mississippi artist Stephanie Dwyer, bottle trees have been displayed in the South since the 1700s and are a remnant of African tradition. “Placing colorful bottles on the ends of broken limbs is said to keep evil spirits (or maybe just nosy neighbors) away from the home. As the story goes, the sun’s glimmer through the glass mesmerizes the spirits and traps them in the bottles,” Dwyer’s Web site says.

Just under 34,000 people live in Williamsburg County, which is about the number who lived there in 1900, according to Census figures. 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.

November 4, 2013November 17, 2013

ArtFields, Lake City, S.C.

ArtFields, a new annual arts festival in rural Lake City, S.C.

You don’t expect to find a world-class art gallery in Lake City, a rural South Carolina community in the Southern Crescent between Kingstree and Florence.

The Center for a Better South’s Andy Brack wrote about Lake City last week in the online magazine Charleston Currents:

“But that’s just what you can experience thanks to millions of dollars being pumped into the community by native daughter and financier Darla Moore. There’s a lot of redevelopment — even a boutique hotel being built downtown — and an annual art festival, ArtFields, that has $100,000 in cash prizes to draw attention to the area and promote opportunities.

We stumbled upon the Jones-Carter Gallery last week in a visit to the Pee Dee and were blown away. Right now, the gallery is showcasing the work of modern painter William H. Johnson (1901-1970), an African-American master born in Florence. He moved to New York City when he was 17 and saved money to pay for classes at the National Academy of Design. He enjoyed some success with his modern paintings with folk influences, but by middle age, he wasn’t able to sustain himself through art. He reportedly stopped painting in 1956 and lived in a state hospital for the last 23 years of his life.

Johnson’s art — more than 1,000 pieces — almost was thrown away, but was rescued by friends and later given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service honored Johnson’s talent by issuing a postage stamp in recognition of being one of the country’s most important African-American artists.

The exhibit in Lake City is worth the trip. Developed by Morgan State University and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, it offers oils, woodcuts, watercolors and more that dazzle.

But what’s more interesting is the fact that this gallery is in Lake City, home to about 6,500 people, about a third of whom live below the federal poverty line. Like Charleston Place was a linchpin of an economic resurgence in Charleston, the gallery, which was a hardware and grocery store in a previous life, and the hotel under construction may become a similar lure. According to a brochure, the gallery “is convenient to contemporary shops, clothiers, antique stores and several restaurants.”

A dozen years ago, few would have conceived as Lake City as a “destination,” but it’s worth seeing what’s happening in this small Pee Dee town.

Lake City is in the Pee Dee’s Florence County near Interstate 95 in northeast South Carolina. One in five people in Lake City, population 6,715, is white, while some 77.5 percent of residents are black. The city’s poverty rate is more than 32 percent, according to the U.S. Census. The high poverty rate is a testament to Lake City’s rural nature since its home county, supported by the regional city of Florence, has a 19.4 percent poverty rate.

November 2, 2013November 25, 2013

Paradise Restaurant, Cooperville, Georgia

The old Paradise Restaurant, which apparently suffered a fire in recent years, is closed, as is the gas station at right. Both are adjacent to a spooky old motel featured on Halloween in this post.

The complex is in Cooperville at the intersection of U.S. Highway 301 and Georgia Highway 17 in Screven County, Ga., which got started after the Revolutionary War and soon became part of the Black Belt of Georgia where cotton became an important staple crop tended by enslaved African Americans.

The county’s population jumped from 3,019 in 1800 to 8,274 by 1860, according to Census figures. While it had 14,593 people in 2010, the county lost an estimated 391 people — 2.7 percent — by 2012, according to the U.S. Census. In 2010, Some 25.4 percent of county residents lived below the federal poverty level, 9 points higher than the state average.

More QuickFacts from the U.S. Census

Screven County in Wikipedia

October 25, 2013November 17, 2013

Farmhouse in town, Sylvania, Ga.

In many towns across the rural South, it’s not hard to find old homes near downtown that were once at the edge of town. They blended a little of country and city at the same time.

While decrepit now, this old house might soon be in for an upfit, based on some of the stuff in the yard that’s outside of the picture. The property sits about two blocks off the main street in Sylvania, Ga.

Sylvania, the county seat of Screven County, had 2,675 people in 2000, according to the Census. Screven County got its start after the Revolutionary War and soon became part of the Black Belt of Georgia where cotton became an important staple crop tended by enslaved African Americans.

More QuickFacts from the U.S. Census

Screven County in Wikipedia

October 23, 2013November 17, 2013

Storage, Sylvania, Ga.

Here’s something found in many rural Southern agricultural towns — warehouses and grain elevators. This operation is run by Daniel W. Reed Co., in Sylvania, Ga.

More QuickFacts from the U.S. Census

Screven County in Wikipedia

October 21, 2013November 17, 2013

Church is out, Sylvania, Ga.

Members of the First United Methodist Church in Sylvania in eastern Georgia are shown leaving church on a fall Sunday. Despite the fact that Southern states tend to be more conservative than states in other parts of the country, Southerners tend to be more generous with larger percentages of their discretionary income going to charity.

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, four Southern states — Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina — are in the top five most charitable states. Georgia ranks eighth, according to a 2012 study.

More QuickFacts from the U.S. Census

Screven County in Wikipedia

October 19, 2013November 17, 2013

Closed Saturday, Yemassee, S.C.

This battered business is what train passengers wee when looking east while at the station in Yemassee, S.C., crossroads of four counties. Next door to this business is a white store with “Praise the Lord” and “Jesus is Lord” painted on large windows. The sign on top of the building says “Church of the Lord Jesus Christ Deliverance.” Down the street is a similar store converted into “The Holy Temple Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, Inc. of the Apostolic Faith.”

While Yemassee touches on Beaufort, Colleton and Jasper counties, the station and buildings in the photo appear to be in Hampton County, 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.

QuickFacts from the U.S. Census

October 16, 2013November 17, 2013

Fresh shrimp, Yemassee, S.C.

The town of Yemassee, S.C., which is at the intersection of four different Crescent counties, is all about shrimp. It has a shrimp festival every year. And as you can see from this picture, it’s even sold in bait shops (although, we’ve got to admit, that from some angles, the sign appears to be pointing to the pool hall.)

Just around the corner from this commercial complex is the other big thing in Yemassee — the Amtrak station. While Yemassee touches on Beaufort, Colleton and Jasper counties, the station and buildings in the photo are in Hampton County, 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.

QuickFacts from the U.S. Census