Justice for the Rural Poor Catherine Coleman Flowers The New York Review of Books

In urban areas about 12 percent of residents live below the poverty line, but in rural communities that number increases to 15.5 percent. In the South the rural poverty rate is close to 20 percent; in the Midwest it is thirteen. A shocking 30 percent of rural Black people live in poverty. According to the US Department of Agriculture, which maintains these numbers, poverty has been declining since it was first measured in 1960, but that decline isn’t evenly distributed throughout the country. As he launched this war—the only successful one in his administration—Johnson and Lady Bird showed the country its implications by traveling to Martin County, Kentucky. Poverty in central Appalachia in 1960 was at 59 percent, and by visiting families mired in it, the president gave Congress a reason to vote for and fund the programs he hoped to enact.

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Congress had banned “debt peonage” after the Civil War, but it had never really disappeared, and now it returned with a vengeance. Workers could hardly avoid falling behind on payments for necessities, at which point liens were placed on their crops, depriving them of the only way to pay off their ever-mounting debt. Lockers are rusty, lunches look like fast food, school supplies are limited. For a few young people, education, the military, or sports offer a way out—a path to improve their lot and maybe even offer the rest of the family a measure of relief. But most poor, rural Americans are deprived of their fair share of the American dream, and over the years the gap between them and the urban middle class has widened to the point of lunacy.

Justice for the Rural Poor

Social Security benefits were expanded to include children and struggling families. One of the most notable land purchases was in Macon County, Alabama, about two hours east of Lowndes County. There, in partnership with the Tuskegee Institute, a community known as Prairie Farms was created out of two former plantations. The plan, organized entirely by African American managers, was to have impoverished families from the Black Belt relocate to Prairie Farms.

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Or maybe they live a couple of miles off the interstate, not too far from a city but just far enough to qualify as rural. Even so, there aren’t many jobs to be had in rural America. Working a Customer Reviews Of BooksTime’s Bookkeeping Services minimum-wage job means driving to the closest one. That means, in turn, using your earnings to pay for gas and get your car repaired. We call for the international community to commit to ending the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and to finally pursuing a comprehensive and just political solution in Palestine. Online reputation management for financial firms means strategically managing public perception.

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Only the following year did I discover one of the greatest injustices in our country. A Lowndes County commissioner asked me to Legal E-Billing visit Mattie and Odell McMeans, who lived in a trailer community with about eighteen family members dispersed among five mobile homes. The family’s septic system was failing, sending raw sewage flowing from their home—and because they couldn’t afford to repair it, they had been threatened with eviction and arrest. One member of the family, the pastor at a small church, cried when he told us that his church had no septic tank at all, as a result of which the local authorities had forbidden him from conducting services.

• There is never enough money to cover food and clothes, utility payments, and anything that goes wrong—and something always goes wrong.
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• Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office included a breathtaking series of legislative victories.
• Only the following year did I discover one of the greatest injustices in our country.
• After all, the residents of these parts of the country tend not to be particularly politically active.
• They live in agricultural communities, or maybe in towns that used to be almost prosperous, thanks to coal mines or factories that have by now been closed for years.

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• Through donations from churches, philanthropies, and prosperous Black communities, these places of higher education not only survived but thrived during the dark years of the Depression.
• Once I started in Lowndes County, I saw how widespread the problem was in rural communities throughout the South.
• Poverty in central Appalachia in 1960 was at 59 percent, and by visiting families mired in it, the president gave Congress a reason to vote for and fund the programs he hoped to enact.
• Fourteen of the most notable—among them Tuskegee, Alabama A&M, Alabama State University, Oakwood University, and Stillman—are in Alabama, which has the most HBCUs of any state.

Fourteen of the most notable—among them Tuskegee, Alabama A&M, Alabama State University, Oakwood University, and Stillman—are in Alabama, which has the most HBCUs of any state. Through donations from churches, philanthropies, and prosperous Black communities, these places of higher education not only survived but thrived during the dark years of the Depression. The Department of Education notes that enrollment during this period grew by 60 percent.

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Other forms of improvement arrived via the FDR administration. Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office included a breathtaking series of legislative victories. One of them created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put unemployed men back to work planting trees, bolstering national parks, and fighting forest fires; eventually it employed 2.5 million men. The Public Works Administration, part of the National Industrial Recovery Act, channeled government money into state infrastructure projects like roads and bridges. With the Homeowners Refinancing Act, people in danger of losing their homes were given online bookkeeping low-interest loans and refinancing options.