Tag: poverty

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Rural Studio, Hale County, Ala.

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Corrugated cardboard pod, Rural Studio, Newbern, Ala. Photo by Bill Hawker, March 2009.

 

Hale County, Ala., the locale for the 1941 book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” by James Agee with photographs by Walker Evans, remains poor today.  Some 26 percent of people in Hale County live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census.

But also today, Hale County has Auburn University’s Rural Studio, an undergraduate architecture program that has been designing creative houses and public structures throughout the county since 1993.  Above is the outside wall of a corrugated card building built in 2001 on the Rural Studio campus in Newbern.  Click here for more. 

In 2013, students worked on four structures, including a solar greenhouse and converted an old bank building into a community library in Newbern.  More.

Photo taken in Marcy 2009 by Bill Hawker, Sydney Australia, for the Center for a Better South.  All rights reserved.

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Clothes line, Allendale, S.C.

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Clothes drying in the sun, Allendale, S.C., May 2013.

 

This clothesline in rural Allendale, S.C., represents more than drying laundry in the full sun to get that “fresh” smell and feel.  It is a reminder that a lot of people in distressed counties prefer saving money by letting the sun do its work on clothes than spend a dollar at a laundry mat to get them dry.

Allendale County with just under 10,000 people is one of South Carolina’s smallest counties, but also its poorest.  With just over 40 percent of people living at or below the 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.

Photo by Michael Kaynard, May 2013.  All rights reserved.

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Cropduster, near Pitt, Ga.

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Cropduster, Wilcox County, Ga.

 

The cotton, peanut and watermelon cropdusting season is winding down fro Charles Timmons of AeroDusters in Wilcox County, Ga.  Wilcox says his yellow and blue 1992 single-engine plane can spray up to about 100 acres per trip as he flies over fields stretching from middle Georgia to Florida.  Timmons has been spraying crops for 44 years.

Wilcox County in Georgia’s heartland is one of the state’s smaller counties with 9,068 residents, according to the U.S. Census.  About two thirds of residents are white and a third black.  Estimates by the U.S. Census are that 27.4 percent of county residents live in poverty.

Photo taken May 15, 2013 by Michael Kaynard of Kaynard Photography.  All rights reserved.

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Onion harvest, Cedar Crossing, Ga.

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Workers are now harvesting Vidalia onions, those sweet, delectable springtime delights, in a field just outside Cedar Crossing, Ga., in Toombs County.

Driving through Vidalia and Toombs County, it seems that these world-famous onions have made the area more prosperous than neighboring areas.  Still, about 25 percent of county residents live below the poverty level.  The median household income is $32,464 — more than $17,000 below the national average.

The region has been in the news lately as labor unions and immigrant groups continue to accuse farmers of exploiting Mexican guest workers who do much of the backbreaking harvest work in May.  And now, a group of mostly black American workers in the area are complaining they have a tough time getting work in the fields because of a preference for foreigh guest workers, as highlighted in this May 6 story in The New York Times.

Photo taken May 14, 2013, by Andy Brack.  All rights reserved.

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New project focuses attention on Southern Crescent

The new Southern Crescent project by the Center for a Better South is an effort to draw attention to underserved areas of the American South to help coordinate better delivery of services to the area’s people.

  • See the new Web site that highlights areas in the Crescent.  as it stretches from Tidewater Virginia through the Carolinas and middle Georgia and then northwesterly toward the Mississippi Delta. [NOTE: The Southern Crescent Web site has since been absorbed into the Better South site that you’re using.]

Below at left in a map that shows the higher rate of diabetes in the South, you can see the general outline of the Crescent, the geographic area that stretches from the Tidewater part of eastern Virgina southward through the Carolinas along Interstate 95.

Diabetes rate, males, 30+, 2008, via Nature.com

Diabetes rate, males, 30+, 2008, via Nature.com

It then turns west through Georgia and lower Alabama before curling northwesterly to the Mississippi Delta.  Home to millions, this soft underbelly of the American South has been underserved for generations.  It has a higher than normal incidence of poverty, unemployment and health problems that stretch through nine states.

This Web site provides weekly looks at communities in the Crescent to help people better understand challenges in the region.  You can help by donating money to bolster our efforts or, if you live in the Crescent, submitting pictures of people and places throughout the area.