Poverty in America
THE summer is brutal here. A hot, stinging heat that makes the crickets sing louder.
For the poor it is unbearable.
Thousands live along the Mississippi Delta in squalid conditions. Some in dilapidated shacks – tiny buildings left behind from the civil rights era - the doors hanging off, the windows rotten.
They are jobless, hopeless and rely on state handouts to feed and cloth their children.
A handful have no running water, no electricity and just a bucket to bathe in.
At times it’s hard to believe this is America and not a Third World nation.
But amid the wooden shacks and deserted dirt tracks shines a beacon of light.
One man, Hollywood star Morgan Freeman, has become the Delta’s unlikely saviour.
For the wealthy Oscar winner the Delta is America’s shame.
Freeman, 70, who was born in Memphis, Tennessee, but raised in the Delta, is doing his bit to pump life back into a region stripped of industry and a workforce.
His focus is Clarksdale, Mississippi - a steamy furnace of a town that claims itself the birthplace of the Blues.
Cradled between vast cotton fields and cat fish farms on the US 61 highway, it’s where he calls home.
“The Delta has always been magic, there’s a comfort level for me here higher than anywhere else,” he says.
“The Delta’s problem is that agricultural work has been stripped away.”
“Five men can now run a 5,000-acre farm as opposed to 500 in the old days. It’s ripped the heart out of the Delta.
"People ask me 'Mr Freeman - you have fame and fortune and can live anywhere you want to live – why here?' My answer is: 'I live here because I have fame and fortune and can live anywhere I want."
“I left Mississippi in 1955 with the intention to never return. But as I grew
older and I experienced living in California and the New York area I came to
realize that the South and in particular my education growing up in
Mississippi was very good.
“Moreover, I came to realize that racism in some degree exists everywhere -outside the South it was insidious - here in the South I see it more easily.”
The Mirror caught up with Freeman, the star of films like The Shawshank Redemption and Lucky Number Slevin, in downtown Clarksdale.
He strolled along an abandoned rail track and looked out across the town’s dusty streets.
“The Delta has suffered for a long time and we are doing what little we can to get it back at its best,” he said.
From 2001 to 2005, the federal government spent nearly pounds 600 million
to boost farmers' incomes and invigorate local economies in this poverty-stricken Delta.
Most residents are black, but less than five percent of the money went to
black farmers.
They own relatively little land, and so generally do not qualify for the payments.
Ninety-five percent of the money went to large, commercial farms, virtually all white-owned.
In Bolivar County farmers received pounds 100million in crop subsidies over the five-year period, while just pounds 5.5million in Rural Development grants from the Agriculture Department went to replace the abandoned factories, decaying houses and boarded-up downtowns in dozens of dirt-poor, majority-black Delta towns.
Many of these towns are trapped in a painful death spiral, plagued by poverty, crime and unemployment.
More than 100,000 people - nearly a quarter of the population - have fled in recent decades in search of a better life.
Freeman and close friend Bill Luckett, a local businessman and lawyer, are using Blues music to reinvigorate Clarksdale.
They have already opened a now almost legendary Blues club called Ground Zero.
The club has spawned smaller “duke joints” nearby, a shop that sells memorabilia and a museum.
Down the road the pair have opened an upmarket restaurant called Madidi, and are renovating several buildings along Clarksdale’s once deserted roads.
Morgan and Bill see their town as a shining example of what the Delta can become.
A mecca for music, a top tourist destination.
They hope that one day industry will return and Mississippi will thrive again.
“We want to do our part to see Clarksdale grow and prosper,” says Morgan. “We have been open for six years and are happy to see people from all over the world and all races enjoy what we have to offer.”
Bill says their work can only help lift Clarksdale out of the doldrums.
“The children in the Delta are now among the worst victims. They are
stuck in a vicious cycle.
“We have a tremendous drop out rate from our schools. And what's more alarming are the number of high school graduates who never go on to higher education, way below the national norms.
“What we have is a bunch of kids being spat out on the side, with no
skills, no future, so it's going to take a while to get the process working.”
Many officials and residents blame crime, drugs, underperforming
schools, an unskilled labour pool and poor work habits for the area's
demise.
And on the drive along Highway 61 the problems Bill and Morgan are trying to combat are there for all to see.
In the small town of Ruleville we met Elijah “Joe” Dixson, 59, sat on his porch.
His house on 421A Oak Avenue is falling apart. The wood is rotten and plastic sheets cover the broken windows to keep out the cold in the winter.
Inside is a lounge come bedroom - the walls are black with dirt and haven’t seen paint in decades. The floor is filthy and your eyes are drawn to a gaping hole by the bed. The kitchen is much worse.
“I have no running water and no gas to cook, I got a five gallon bucket to bathe. In the winter it’s freezing, there’s just too many holes.
“One time a snake came up into the house and scared me to death.”
The little comfort Joe has is a small electrical socket from which he can hook up his oxygen machine, a fridge and a small portable stove.
“When I had a stroke three weeks ago, my light got cut off,” he said.
Joe has had two heart attacks and two strokes while living at the property and survives on a disability handout of just pounds 280 a month.
Despite the dilapidated state of his home a landlord still has the cheek to collect pounds 125 rent every month. He refuses to fix the house up.
Joe drinks to numb the pain of his existence. A stack of empty Olde English beer cans and a small bottle of Beam’s eight star whisky sits on the porch.
A nurse pops by every so often to check on Joe and his homeless friend Bobby Keys comes over as well. She was asleep on the porch when we arrived.
Next door we find 55-year-old Charles Crowder. Crowder is a giant of a man and lives in a tiny two bed house with two children and three grandchildren.
Charles is a diabetic with high blood-pressure and muscle deterioration. He says he has no health insurance.
The back of his left calf is black and the stench inside his home is unbearable. A pile of clothes, toys and even a bike is stacked up by the TV.
His grandkids Deshaw, three, Deandri, four and Dexter, five, play happily in their underwear outside the front door.
“I wanted to work until I got sick,” says Charles. “But we’re okay, we got food stamps, we got welfare.”
As we drove through the Delta this was the strangely positive attitude we heard time and time again. But the tragic stories were the same.
Cass Pennington, 55, Director of the Delta Health Alliance says two out of three people in the Delta live under the poverty line.
“We are right at the bottom of poverty in America, look around, these are Third World conditions, it pains me to see so many people living like this,” he said.
“When I was a kid, we were poor but at least everybody had a job. Now people are dirt poor and noone has a job.”
Cass says one out of three people in the Delta don’t have medical insurance, meaning they are not going to the doctor.
“The biggest problem is diabetes, it is the most chronic condition we have.
“The people buy the cheapest products in the store and the food isn’t healthy. Once they have diabetes they don’t know how to look after themselves.
“Infant mortality is high in the Delta, the death rate from cancer is high as is the death rate from heart disease. People don’t have the money to be screened for the early signs of these diseases.
“There’s also a HIV problem and crack cocaine is a major issue.”
The Delta also has one of the greatest proportions of “food insecure” inhabitants in the US. There are almost 40million such people in America, according to Department of Agriculture figures, meaning they cannot reliably come up with the money to avoid going hungry.
Next stop is Glendora, around 25 miles from Clarksdale and just off Highway 61 by the giant State Penitentiary at Parchman, Sunflower County.
A short row of crumbling buildings, their walls covered with graffiti and interiors stuffed with rubbish, is all that remains of this tiny community's downtown.
We found AD Jones, 73, sat on a stool stripping corn inside the tiny grocery store he runs.
Jones has lived here most of his life and remembers what it was like less than a decade ago.
"The whole strip was lit up," he said. "There used to be two more stores, clubs, a pool bar and a post office.
“Now the town is dead, only a few of us left behind.”
Next door is Ms T’s snack bar, a run down eatery come shop. Half the town’s inhabitants loiter outside.
Owner Sharon Scooter, 38, a large imposing lady who draws a loaded gun on us just for laughs, says the town is on its knees.
“There’s no jobs, no opportunity, people got nothing to do with themselves,” she said.
A short drive away we find Mary Hodges, a 53-year-old mum of three.
Mary is busy cooking a Southern speciality - fried pork chops in breadcrumbs.
She’s a lady of few words but invites us into her trailer with a smile.
Her home is like all the others – badly run down and in need of repair.
One of her son’s, Clarence, 23, sits on the front porch.
Clarence and his two brothers want to work but can’t find a job.
“There ain’t nothing for us to do. I stay here for my mum, we hope things will get better round here.”
He shows us his battered old Cadillac parked out front. He hot-wires it to get it started.
It is a familiar story. Despite millions of pounds in private and government grants and national exposure through news reports and documentaries, local residents and experts agree conditions in the Delta are getting worse.
Some people here have to get by on little more than pounds 3 a day.
Dogs wonder the street: lame, with fleas or dead. Dozens of cars decay in people's yards.
Another town and more poverty.
In Coahoma, Shawna Jones, 29, wonders out of her ramshackle trailer in her underwear to hang the washing out.
She has two small children and supports her family by working as a bus monitor three days-a-week on just pounds 12 a day. She fills the gap with welfare cheques.
“I can’t even feed my kids properly, noone should have to live like this,” she protests.
Back in Clarksdale and Morgan Freeman’s vision seems to be coming to fruition.
The blues industry is the flagship of the Delta's tourism sector and here visitors can stand on the sacred ground of blues legends, while seeking out the cold beverages and hot tamales the artists reference in their songs.
But is soulful music enough to attract big employers and developers.
"They're not coming here to locate a factory because of blues music," answers Bobby Tarzi, who owns the Delta Amusement Blues Cafe in downtown Clarksdale.
"Nobody's going to come here if you're white and put your kid in a public school.”
The Delta always will have to contend with the perception, real or not, that its schools are unfit for learning. And that sentiment is linked inextricably to race.
So for Morgan and his friend Bill the road ahead is long and winding.
As we head north on Highway 61, I wonder how many other rural slums we pass, off the exits… just out of sight.
