Not only does the autumn sunlight dance warm shades and shadows on this old barn off McIntosh Road in Williamsburg County, S.C., but it highlights how the barn is in the autumn of its days, according to retired editor Linda W. Brown.
Such pastoral scenes dot the landscape of the Southern Crescent to reflect two realities — the relaxed beauty of the area and the slow decay of infrastructure that once powered the rural South.
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.
Photo taken Sept. 27, 2013, by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.