New Americans, Mount Pleasant, S.C.

New U.S. citizens sworn in in S.C.  Photo by Andy Brack.
New U.S. citizens sworn in in S.C. Photo by Andy Brack.

Some 111 people from 52 countries became U.S. citizens Tuesday during a ceremony at the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site in Mount Pleasant, S.C.  Smiles abounded during the ceremony.  New citizens held small American flags as they listened to speakers and waited to take the oath of allegiance.

While Mount Pleasant in Charleston County isn’t in the Southern Crescent, people in the new group of citizens lived in communities across the region.  Alvaro Koo, who serves in the Air Force at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter,  said he was proud to be a U.S. citizen.  “Now I’m actually part of the country I’m serving,” said the senior airman who was born in Panama.

  • To read more of this citizenship ceremony, click here.

Photograph taken Sept. 17, 2013, by Andy Brack.  All rights reserved.

Red barn, near Bennettsville, S.C.

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Photographer Michael Kaynard of Charleston, S.C., writes that this stereotypical barn off U.S. Highway 15 south of Bennettsville, S.C., continues to shelter equipment used on an adjacent farm.  “I was drawn to the design.  It was quite a fancy design for a barn.”  Across the rural South, more and more barns are being lost to progress.

Bennettsville is the county seat for Marlboro County, where almost 29 percent of residents live below the federal poverty line.  The county had 28,145 residents in 2012, 51 percent of whom were black, according to Census estimates.

Photo by Michael Kaynard.  All rights reserved.  Originally posted April 25, 2013.

Grand house standing empty, Tatum, S.C.

Tatum, S.C.
Tatum, S.C.

This once grand house in the Pee Dee town of South Carolina appears to stand empty, at the mercy of the elements.  Photographer Michael Kaynard reports it has a lot of ornat features and probably was a nice house in its day.

“When I see houses like this, I am drawn to them because of their age and architectural features.  someone was probably very proud of this structure.  Now, no one seems to care what happens to it.”

— Photo taken in April 28, 2013, by Michael Kaynard.  All rights reserved.

Empty grocery, Greeleyville, S.C.

Empty grocery, Greeleyville, S.C.
Empty grocery, Greeleyville, S.C.

Retired editor and photographer Linda W. Brown remembers when Greeleyville, S.C., had a busy IGA grocery store.  When it closed, a Super G Foods opened in the same location.  Now, that store closed and the parking lot appears to be just a place where big rigs get parked at night and on the weekend.

And so Greeleyville has become a food desert — a place lacking in consumer choices for food, much like the store we profiled earlier this year in Allendale, S.C.  Without a full-service store, Greeleyville residents have less healthy and fewer close options (think convenience store) and have to drive at least 12 miles to Kingstree to shop at a full-service grocery store.

Greeleyville, population 438, is in southwestern Williamsburg County.  Just under 34,000 people live in the 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.

Copyrighted photo taken on July 14, 2013 by Linda W. Brown  All rights reserved.

Tobacco barn, near Lake City, S.C.

Tobacco barn, near Lake City, S.C.  Photo by Linda W. Brown.
Tobacco barn, near Lake City, S.C. Photo by Linda W. Brown.

You don’t have to drive too far in the rural Southern tobacco belt to find an old tobacco barn like this one in the middle of a field west of Lake City, S.C.

As photographer Linda W. Brown notes, “It’s interesting to see these old barns that once, at this time of year, would have been surrounded by ripening tobacco and now are not. ‘Forlorn’ is a good adjective to describe it.”

Tobacco once ruled farming in many parts of the Carolinas, Virginia and Kentucky because it was a high-price cash crop.  But the production and sale of tobacco in the South has changed dramatically over the last 30 years in the South.  Tobacco auctions, quotas and government price supports dominated prior to 2004 when reforms eliminated government intervention into the market and allowed growers to produce as much as they wanted [Learn more].  These days, auctions are rare — with only one in South Carolina according to this story — and growers enter into direct contracts with buyers.

Lake City, which recently started an annual arts festival to inject new life into its community, 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.

Photo courtesy of Linda W. Brown, 2013.  All rights reserved.

 

 

Main Street, Greeleyville, S.C.

Main Street, Greeleyville, S.C.  Photo by Linda W. Brown.
Main Street, Greeleyville, S.C. Photo by Linda W. Brown.

Once upon a time, Main Street in Greeleyville, S.C., was a thriving place, but shops have closed along Main Street, leaving a lot of it abandoned.  Businesses that open now often locate on U.S. Highway 521, the three-lane main road through town.

“Several stores on Main Street that are beginning to deteriorate as can be seen in the missing bricks at the top of the store on the right of the photo,” former newspaper editor Linda W. Brown writes.  “I think many downtowns are not only losing businesses to the big box stores but to the nearest U.S. highway.”

It’s much the same in small rural towns like Greeleyville, population 438, in southwestern Williamsburg County.  Just under 34,000 people live in the 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.

Copyrighted photo taken on July 30, 2013 by Linda W. Brown  All rights reserved.

Voting booth, Kingstree, S.C.

Voting in Kingstree, S.C.  Photo by Linda W. Brown.
Voting in Kingstree, S.C. Photo by Linda W. Brown.

A voter in Kingstree, S.C., votes in this photo on whether to change Williamsburg County‘s form of government from a council-supervisor type in which an elected official “runs” the county to a council-administrator form in which a professional manager is hired by the local council to run things.

Retired local editor Linda W. Brown says she thought the referendum failed by a 2-1 margin because of voters’ fears that the new form would erode voting rights, which were reduced when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key part of the federal Voting Rights Act earlier this summer.

Across the South, voters tend to participate in elections much like the rest of the nation.  In the 2012 presidential election, for example, 58.2 percent of eligible voters cast ballots nationally.  More than 60 percent of voters in four Southern states (Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina and Virginia) cast ballots, while three others exceeded the national average (Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.)  Only Arkansas, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee were below the national average, but all were above 50 percent, according to a George Mason University study.

Tobacco warehouse, Hemingway, S.C.

 

Growers Big 4 warehouse, Hemingway, S.C.  Photo by Andy Brack.
Growers Big 4 warehouse, Hemingway, S.C. Photo by Andy Brack.

You can see a trailer of flue-cured tobacco, at right, being taken into the Growers Big 4 warehouse in Hemingway, S.C., a small town in northeastern Williamsburg County near Florence and Marion counties.

The production and sale of tobacco in the South has changed dramatically over the last 30 years in the South.  Tobacco auctions, quotas and government price supports dominated prior to 2004 when reforms eliminated government intervention into the market and allowed growers to produce as much as they wanted [Learn more].  These days, auctions are rare — with only one in South Carolina according to this story — and growers enter into direct contracts with buyers.

Williamsburg County, located in the middle of the Southern Crescent, is about 75 miles north of Charleston, S.C.  Just under 34,000 people live in the 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.

Copyrighted photo taken on July 26, 2013 by Better South President Andy Brack  All rights reserved.

 

Old gin, Salters, S.C.

Old cotton gin, Salters, S.C.

Old cotton gin, Salters, S.C.

Here’s another old South Carolina cotton gin, this one in the rural community of Salters in Williamsburg County.

Retired editor Linda W. Brown, who took the photo, notes that the Salters gin not only provided employment for the adults of the community, but it also was a source of recreation for the young people.  One woman who grew up there remembers “jumping cotton bales which were stacked at the gin ‘for recreation.’ She believes the gin closed somewhere around 1970. She says that during the time of year the gin was in operation, the three stores in ‘town’ stayed open late into the night.”

Residents, who often refer to themselves as “Saltines,” love their community and many fight hard to keep out landfills or growth of a current one, Brown writes.

“Visiting Salters for me is like stepping back in time to an era when people spent the afternoons sitting on their front porches watching the trains go by,” Brown writes.

Williamsburg County, located in the middle of the Southern Crescent, is about 75 miles north of Charleston, S.C.  Just under 34,000 people live in the 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.

Copyrighted photo by Linda W. Brown, courtesy of the photographer.  All rights reserved.

Old gin, Salters, S.C.

Old cotton gin, Salters, S.C.
Old cotton gin, Salters, S.C.

The cotton gin in Salters not only provided employment for adults in the rural Williamsburg County community, but it was a source of recreation for young people, former editor Linda W. Brown writes.

“Beth Moseley Tisdale grew up in Salters, and she remembers jumping cotton bales which were stacked at the gin ‘for recreation.’ She believes the gin closed somewhere around 1970. She says that during the time of year the gin was in operation, the three stores in ‘town’ stayed open late into the night.”

Residents, who often refer to themselves as “Saltines,” love their community and many fight hard to keep out landfills or growth of a current one, Brown says.

“Visiting Salters for me is like stepping back in time to an era when people spent the afternoons sitting on their front porches watching the trains go by,” she writes.

Williamsburg County, located in the middle of the Southern Crescent, is about 75 miles north of Charleston, S.C.  Just under 34,000 people live in the 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.

Copyrighted photo by Linda W. Brown, courtesy of the photographer.  All rights reserved.