Florala

Issue date: 4/12/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Terri Barnes EMPTY CHURCH-This old abandoned home sits a few yards away from the main road that leads into Newbern.

Media Credit: Terri Barnes The back door and interior of an abandoned church on Alabama Highway 69 south of Greensboro.

Media Credit: Terri Barnes The interior of an abandoned church on Alabama Highway 69 south of Greensboro

Media Credit: Terri Barnes RURAL STUDIO-Students from Auburn's Rural Studio project build a two-room house for Dinah Young of Newbern. Rural Studio is a program started by Samuel Mockbee of Auburn University that allows architecture students to put their studies to work in the community by building homes for individuals who can't afford or have no means of providing adequate shelter for themselves.

Media Credit: Terri Barnes The finished product.

Media Credit: Terri Barnes EMPTY CHURCH-Curiosity got to me and led me into one of the abandoned houses in Newbern. Inside one such home among debris and under a sagging ceiling was a torn and tattered couch. It appeared someone had been sleeping here recently.

Media Credit: Terri Barnes The mailbox at Dinah Young's property.

Media Credit: Terri Barnes PATCHWORK HIGHWAY-As the road led me closer and closer to Newbern, I could tell I was nearly there.

Media Credit: Terri Barnes Music Man House

The word "poverty" is a term that seemed distant to me before this semester. It was a label I attached to the homeless in metropolitan cities and those displaced by disaster such as Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in 2004.

Natural disasters do create poverty situations, but the term goes deeper than this. In an effort to understand this word and its reaches, I decided to look at the face and detail of this issue more closely.

By starting here in the South where I grew up, I discovered the word "poverty" is not limited to, or rather should not be seen as simply a person without a home.

Poverty affects communities as well as a few select individuals. It can encompass a lack of resources both material and social including shelter, food, drinking water, education, health care and opportunity. It is very much a part of the South and in fact a large part.

According to Rural Poverty Research Center (RPRC), 340 of the 386 (88%) persistently poor counties are nonmetro and 82% of the nonmetro persistently poor counties are in the South United States.

My search for understanding led me to a small community in the Black Belt of Alabama known as Hale County including the cities of Newbern and Greensboro.

This is an area, according to the Institute for Rural Health Research (IRHR), with "roughly two hundred counties comprising today's Black Belt, over half the population is African-American.... It is also an area in dire need, confronted with economic stagnation, declining population, and insufficient health care and schools."

As the road led me closer and closer to Newbern, I could tell I was nearly there.

Smooth black four-lane asphalt gave way to a brown and narrow two-lane road spotted all over with black tar patches. It looked like a patchwork quilt. The grand country homes became sparser. Old shacks and crumbled-in barn houses took over the landmarks.

The architecture of the homes and stores had a very earthy quality about them. Tin materials covered many rooftops. Several roadside businesses were cratered on the sides with large holes where age and weather had beaten them down

These photos are a collection of the scenery and setting I observed while visiting Hale County over the last few months.

For more information and resources on rural poverty, visit these websites:

• http://irhr.ua.edu/blackbelt/index.html
• http://www.rprconline.org
• http://www.alabamapoverty.org
• http://www.ruralstudio.com

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools