Scott Rodd
Stark Images Capture Real Life In One Of America’s Poorest Towns
"Stark Images Capture Real Life In One Of America’s Poorest Towns"
Share:
The group of men who gather at Steven’s house every Saturday to throw back a few beers and enjoy his famous barbecue ribs sat under the tent in backyard, taking refuge from the late-summer sun.
“I think it should be torn down,” Steven said. “Just look at it—all the windows are broken and the roof is caving in. It’s falling apart.”
“Why should they tear it down when they could put it to good use?” his nephew Jimmy responded. “At least fix up the gym so the kids have a place to play basketball. That school is part of Campti’s history—it would be a shame to see it go.”
The building Steven and Jimmy were arguing over is the Campti Middle School, which stands across the street from Steven’s house in Campti, Louisiana, one of the country’s poorest counties. It was originally an all-black school, but eventually integrated before closing in the early ’90s. Although Steven and Jimmy held opposing views of what should be done with it, they both took pride in the school and believed it positively shaped generations of Campti residents. Jimmy wanted to see the school renovated; Steven, on the other hand, was doubtful that the town would devote the necessary funds.
“It’s just painful to watch it deteriorate day after day,” Steven said.
Leon and his horse
CREDIT: Scott Rodd
A man named Leon showed up on the back of a horse just as the ribs were being laid on the smoker. He joined the rest of the men under the tent, leaving his horse in the vacant lot across the street without tying him up. When the discussion turned to politics in Campti, Leon said, “There’s three kinds of people in Campti.” He smirked, showing large gaps between his teeth. “The good, the bad, and the fucked up.”
Leon grew up in Campti, working on his father’s farm during the day and breaking wild horses with his brother in the evening. He left Campti for a job after high school and returned home for good only 11 years ago at the age of 63.
“That’s when I signed up for Social Security and gone and made an ass out of myself,” he said. “’Cause right when I signed up they raised the age to 66, and now they’re talking about raising it again to 70. But hardly no one makes it to that age around here. Heck, I can open my old yearbook and point to maybe ten people from my class that are still alive today.”
In spite of his circumstances, Leon always managed to meet his responsibilities. “I have a home that I maintain with some farmland and a few horses. I have 22 children, and the youngest is nine. But no one hunts me down for child support or nothing. I take care of my own, always.”
When the conversation under the tent began to heat up, Leon joined in. “George Bush ruined this country—both Bushes, as a matter of fact. Obama tried to bring us back to where we were, but he failed, too. We’ve had centuries of men promising great things when they’re elected, but time and again failing to deliver on their word. This country’s long overdue for a change—if I don’t see it in my lifetime, if it’s not Hilary or someone else, then it certainly won’t be long after I die that we see a woman step into office.”
A car wash on Route 71
CREDIT: Scott Rodd
Campti is one of the poorest towns in America—more specifically, among towns with a population over 1,000, it’s the 8th poorest. With a median household income under $14,000 and a staggering poverty rate of 55 percent, many Campti residents don’t have access to the basic resources that most Americans take for granted, such as food, reliable housing, and medical facilities. Campti begs the question: How do those who live in dire poverty manage their daily lives, and can a town struggling under the weight of such poverty ever transform itself?
The history of Campti is both rich and turbulent, a tale of prosperity, resilience, and decline. The town is the oldest settlement along Louisiana’s Red River, which made it a hub for trade and travel through the 18th century. In the final years of the Civil War, though, Campti was destroyed when a group of Confederate soldiers returning from battle set the town ablaze. The only buildings left standing were the veteran’s hospital and the Catholic church on the hill.
In the following decades, the town tenaciously bounced back, and by the early 20th century Campti once again flourished. Since the county was rich in natural resources, specifically timber, mills and industry were drawn to Natchitoches Parish, which brought jobs and capital to the area. The construction of the Louisiana Railway, now part of the Kansas City Southern Railroad, also facilitated Campti’s recovery by increasing commerce and creating ease of access. William Edenborn, dubbed the “father of barbed wire” and one of the wealthiest men in the country at the time, launched the construction of the railway. While he never lived in Campti, the town’s main street was named in his honor, and the restaurants, hotels, and stores that once populated it attested to the prosperity he brought to the area. Even during the Depression when the rest of the country was struggling, Campti’s economy remained strong and many people traveled to the area in search of work.
If you visit Campti today, it’s hard to imagine that the town was once so successful. Weatherworn trailers line neighborhood streets while antebellum houses crumble behind curtains of thicket and vines. On Route 71, semi-trucks and through-travelers fly past vacant stores and restaurants, the names of the businesses on windows and walls faded. Edenborn Street, too, is now empty save for a few crumbling structures, some municipal buildings, and the Campti Historic Museum. What caused such an unforgiving fall from economic grace in this quiet, working-class town?
Donna Isaacs
CREDIT: SCOTT RODD
Donna Isaacs, executive director of the nonprofit organization Campti Field of Dreams, which runs the Campti Historic Museum, has studied the town’s history for the last two years in hopes of answering this question and reversing the town’s decline. A native of Jamaica, she moved to the U.S. in 1984 and has degrees in engineering and construction.
From her extensive research over the years, Isaacs points to two significant events in the middle of the 20th century that led to Campti’s downfall. “First, in 1956, the Crawford Young mill burned down,” she said. “The mill only employed 50 people, but it was the heart of the town’s economy and its destruction had far-reaching effects.”
An article by Ed Kerr, “When the Mill Burned Down,” was written four years after the destruction of the Crawford Young mill and describes the devastating “chain reaction” that took place after the destruction of the mill and how “the threads of local economy [began] to unwind with increasing tempo.” The A.C. Stiles planing mill, which dressed lumber from the Crawford Young mill before it was shipped, closed down immediately, leaving dozens of people out of work. Business stagnated for local carpenters and logging contractors, and nearby forest landowners saw a sharp decline in demand for raw timber. Local businesses without direct ties to timber, such as grocery stores and service stations, suffered from decreased commerce in the area. In the three years following the fire, residents began to leave Campti in search of opportunities elsewhere, and according to Kerr, “When the people moved out, the house movers moved in [and] the houses were sold and moved away.”
“Luckily,” Kerr concluded, “the Campti story had a happy ending.” By 1960, the Crawford Young Mill had been rebuilt and the economy showed signs of recovery. Just as Campti had bounced back from the fire that crippled the town at the end of the Civil War, Kerr believed it would rebound from this destructive fire nearly a century later.
But then Campti was dealt the blow that, according to Isaacs, would seal its downfall: desegregation.
“Racial integration is often viewed as a wholly positive development in American history,” Isaacs said, “but the fallout for blacks in the years that followed desegregation—the unrest, tension, and economic decline—often goes ignored.”
Part of this fallout can be seen in terms of local business. Jim Kilcoyne, director of the Small Business Center at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, has researched the development of small business in Louisiana and noted the negative repercussions that were a byproduct of desegregation. “During the Jim Crow era,” he explained, “black business owners were savvy enough to adapt to the racist laws of the time so that their businesses benefited—economically, at least. Small businesses owned by blacks were guaranteed 100 percent of the black consumer base, and if their products were better than those offered by white business owners, they drew part of the white consumer base as well.” That all changed after desegregation. “Businesses owned by blacks could no longer depend on receiving the entire black consumer base, and they lost much of their white consumer base due to boycott or because whites left the area in refusal to integrate.”
Kilcoyne didn’t suggest that segregation was beneficial for black people; the harm it caused far outweighed the very minor benefits. But black people had adapted to an unjust, racist system for decades, and when this system was overhauled, it promised misfortune for many in the community. And with the economy already bruised from the destruction of the mill, this misfortune hit Campti’s black community particularly hard.
Campti’s abandoned public pool
CREDIT: SCOTT RODD
The most potent symbol of the fallout from desegregation turned out to be a municipal relic from half a century ago. Across the street from the Historic Museum, an abandoned public pool sits crumbling and empty save for the debris that has collected in its basin for the last 50 years. The pool had served Campti’s white population through the 1950s, but like other all-white facilities in town, it eventually violated desegregation laws. Instead of integrating the pool so all of Campti’s residents could enjoy it, however, white town leaders, supported by much of the white population, decided to decommission the pool and close it to everyone.
The decommissioning of Campti’s public pool crystallized how desegregation laws were positive in the abstract but often problematic in application. Local governments were largely responsible for implementing desegregation laws, but blacks in these local communities couldn’t vote to elect leaders with their best interests in mind. As a result, integration laws that were established to create equality were often muddied by the indiscretion of local white leaders.
Eventually, the residents who had the means to leave Campti—the vast majority of them white—did so in the second half of the 20th century. The empty pool left in their wake now serves no purpose beyond being an emblem of the void that was left behind.
Clara
CREDIT: SCOTT RODD
Clara, her daughter Susan, and Brenda—three generations of Campti women—sat on the front porch as dusk settled and the sun straddled the distant line of oak trees. When asked what needs the most improvement in their town, Susan replied, “The men.”
Clara and Brenda laughed. Susan’s husband Darrel sat at the other end of the porch and looked over his shoulder when Susan made the remark.
“But seriously,” Susan continued, “the leadership in this town needs to improve. Too many undelivered promises. That’s why I hate to vote—because I know there’s no follow-through. Sometimes I think, Why should I even bother?”
“The thing that I think this town needs most is jobs,” Clara said. “People here want to work, but there are no jobs for them to find. People are raised to work in Campti. When I was a girl, my father never let me rest—I was always sawing wood, pulling weeds, or mowing the lawn. It didn’t matter that I was a girl. When I graduated from high school, I found a job to support myself, and when my husband died a few years ago, I learned to support myself all over again. Even when the post office cut back on my hours, I started housesitting to make a little extra money. I’m an independent person—I didn’t want to rely on anyone else. I could probably go on welfare, sure, but I want to depend on myself.”
Susan’s 11-year-old son, Marcus, returned home from school and picked up a rake leaning against the railing. He started cleaning the yard while his younger brother and sister played in the grass. When asked if the task is part of his chores, Susan said, “No, he just does that on his own. Likes to keep the yard clean. Guess hard work runs in his blood.”
Ronald
CREDIT: Scott Rodd
Further Reading: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/01/29/3616743/campti-louisiana/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=tptop3&utm_campaign=tptop3
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten