Elmwood in Washington, NC

Between starting grad school and transitioning to a new role at work, it's been tough to find time to post. Luckily, the holidays are now upon us, which means (a little) more free time!

Something that's been intriguing me for a while is the potential for undervalued historic housing to instigate more economic activity and equitable wealth creation in small towns. To make it clear just how immediate the opportunity of purchasing in such a home is, over the next two weeks I'll be posting listings for homes from across Eastern North Carolina. Some are fixer uppers, others are historic homes with fancy names, all are intriguing in their own way.

I'm not a Realtor, so if you have any real interest, you should contact a local Realtor directly.

You can learn more about the properties that I've posted so far by clicking each picture below.

The summer after my eleventh birthday, my parents got us a truck load of dirt. They had it unloaded amidst a small stand of trees in front of our house, a dirt pit we had come to know as Dirt City. It was AWESOME. For years, my brother and I (and later my sister) would dig in the dirt - creating buildings, roads, and waterways; solving the various civil engineering crises that arise when dirt turns to mud. To us, this was fun. We would create elaborate schemes - often involving random pieces of wood or PVC pipe we found somewhere - and try to bring them to life.

Naturally, when friends came over, unless it was raining or cold, Dirt City was an option. Not everyone would embrace the opportunity, though. Some would jump right in (quite literally, at times), while others would ask to stay inside and play Super Nintendo. Dirt City was seemingly everything to us, but some couldn't see the possibility it offered.

But why was that? I can think of a few thoughts that may have gone through a reluctant friend's head.

• "This doesn't seem interesting or fun."  - I can't think of another kid who had a dirt pit in their front yard. You don't dig holes in the yard and think it's fun unless you can see the bigger picture. If you can't or are unwilling to join in the imagining process, it's going to be a long afternoon out there for you.
• "This looks like hard work." - Going out to dig holes in the muggy Louisiana summer was tough. We would sweat like dogs and gulp endlessly from the water hose. If you can't commit to totally-unnecessary-but-yet-absolutely-necessary manual labor, Dirt City is not for you.
• "This is weird." - When your friend invites you over and says, "OK, let's get the shovels and take them out to Dirt City," that's got to be a strange moment. It takes a second, maybe more, to warm up to that idea; and not everyone was up to it.

In short, our most reluctant friends could not see the value of Dirt City. Where we saw a boundless mini-universe, they saw a dirt pit. As excited as we were, we couldn't force someone to like the experience.

More recently, I've found myself deriving an adult version of that joy and satisfaction I felt as a kid. It happened when I met someone starting a small business in Creswell, when I learned a bit of Kinston history that couldn't be found in a book, and when I discussed teacher retention with the Bertie County Schools HR director. When I see someone demonstrating the value of living and working in their small town, I get excited. And I want to help.

And when I see someone roll their eyes or hear them make a disparaging comment about those same towns, it makes me feel like I did when a friend would remind me that Super Nintendo was more fun than Dirt City. Yes, living in a city has its perks, but small towns bring my imagination to life in a way that cities simply don't.

This year, I've begun to embrace the notion that small towns are like Dirt City. They benefit when more residents and visitors see them with an eye not only on what is but what could be and actively strive for that. So if you're out there, if you're from there, or if you're interested in learning more - let's all grab a shovel and get to work.

In 1861, this map was commissioned by the US Government. It was the first major effort to map population density in America. The following note is found at bottom left of the original document.

This visual had a greater purpose at the time, though. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the Bureau of the Census did not have the capacity to produce typical graphs and tabulations found in previous versions. In fact, a more formal report was not produced until 1864. Instead, Kennedy's United States Coast Survey took data from the Census and produced visualizations intended for military strategy. Though it may seem odd to us now, the Coast Survey at the time had become a "hub of mapmaking innovation," and was therefore perfectly suited for the task - paint the Civil War not as a states' rights' issue, but as the defense of a labor system that required black disenfranchisement to persist.

According to the present-day Census Bureau,

I've been fascinated by this map for over a year now, and I've finally figured out why. It bears a striking resemblance to the two maps below.

It would be foolish to call the correlation direct. The overlap isn't perfect and the flow of money obviously complex. But three reasonable assumptions emerge:

• Pay no attention to the gradual upswing in our economy. In the rural South, the economic and social legacy of slavery persists and will persist barring intervention of some sort.
• Whether intended or not, current federal monies tend to follow old lines of white privilege and power. (The existence of Medicare and Medicaid notwithstanding - the amount doled out per person is beyond comparison.)
• New economic models that do not prioritize external government investment over all else are needed. Communities must band together to generate wealth in new ways.

I'll admit, being a farmer can still be tough; but is it as tough as surviving on $22,000 a year as a family of 4? Not a chance. Even in a terrible year, farmers have safety nets that the poor can only dream of.  
The cruelest twist is that many of the poor, black families who worked on Southern plantations for generations and who did not or could not move away now lack the type of landholdings that would help them qualify for these sorts of subsidies in the first place and the type of access to significant capital required to create an ag business. What's more, these lands are increasingly farmed by corporations, putting them another length beyond the grasp of locals. Under an evolved heading, the disenfranchisement of poor, black Southerners continues.
As an industry, agriculture built almost every town in every county with the highest level poverty on the map above (outside of Kentucky), but it won't be what brings them back.

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Small towns are like snowflakes. From afar, they appear quite similar; but closer inspection reveals seemingly infinite intricacies . Even towns five miles apart can reveal dramatically different values and qualities of life, and the reasons for this have been explored by other, more informed folks for years.

In a country that tipped the urban/rural balance nearly a century ago and is increasingly urban, the future health of our rural places is obviously in danger.  And impoverished small towns and counties typically demonstrate the highest rates of abandonment. Some urbanists might take this to the extreme. "If cities have everything," the thinking goes, "why doesn't everyone move to City X?"

At this risk of oversimplification, I can quickly identify two reasons why this is an absurd question:

• Moving costs money. Not everyone has the money to even rent a U-Haul or put down a deposit on a new place.
  
• Home matters. Leaving a town could represent an unwelcome rupture in a person or family's history.

So there's a choice to be made here - either we allow our small towns to slowly die over the next half century, or we devise ways to foster genuine rural growth. Some may giggle at this, but technology trends like freelancing and online shopping and environmental trends like local food movements and gradually increasing gas mileage standards could point the way to a new rural paradigm.

Trends aside, I believe that the Southern small towns that are most successful over the next twenty years will do the following:

1. Operate with a hopeful, asset-based mindset. Towns are just like people. If you don't respect yourself, others will have difficulty respecting you. If you don't respect and advocate for your town, others won't either.
2. Orient growth and action around traditional downtowns to emphasize revitalization and promote community openness. No town will be truly successful on the back of sprawl.
3. Build a coalition of diverse civic leadership (government, faith, business, education) to ensure that local growth is healthy and equitable. Small towns must acknowledge their histories and ensure that major decisions are not made in lopsided ways that perpetuate an oppressive past.
4. Connect with other nearby towns to build regional brands and pool assets. Unique town identities are obviously desirable, but squabbling over money and influence has played a major role in the present situation.
5. Attract, coach, and retain high-quality leadership in major public institutions (incl. schools, health facilities, and government). Whether they grew up in your town or not, towns must attract quality talent that is compelled by helping grow a local future.

Other measures like chasing manufacturing could also help, but the returns on investment are uncertain. The above set of criteria could be achieved using existing networks and institutions (and surely is already happening in some places).

My primary concern is that towns may lack the wherewithal to accomplish this rapidly. Local leaders may not sense the urgency of the moment or agree with the approach I've laid out above. Check back in with me in twenty years.


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I'm researching the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Southeast Crescent Authority for an upcoming entry. As part of that research, I've been reading through Appalachia: A Report by the President's Appalachian Regional Commission, 1964, which is exactly what it sounds like. 

A few pages in, I found this:

Take a closer look at two of those names:

I found it striking that the signatures of these two men were listed side-by-side because their visions for the South differed so dramatically. Within a four day span in January 1963 (a year before they would have signed the ARC document), each gave a speech that directly addressed how the "race problem" in the South should be addressed - Wallace gave his now-infamous "segregation forever" speech, while Sanford gave what is now known as his "Second Emancipation" speech.

Altogether, this brings up a number of questions.
Did Wallace knowingly sign on to a federal commission, despite his efforts to content that segregation was a states' rights issue? Did he not see the significant overlap between anti-poverty and desegregation efforts? Did he think that the ARC would have no bearing on segregation? Did the two ever meet in person? Was Sanford's address a response of sorts to Wallace? So much to learn here.
The South's history is fraught with contradictions and complications. Add this one to the list.

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I am fascinated by crowdfunding campaigns, especially those centered around local needs. When done well, they represent a direct route to creating real, tangible good that was previously impossible. It's probably not smart to wholly depend on them for full funding, but the power of a platform like IndieGoGo or Kickstarter to drastically affect the flow of capital is undeniable. 

I grow even more hopeful when I consider the potential impact of precise crowdfunding on a town like Kinston, North Carolina. Kinston is 25 minutes from where I live and the hometown of a close friend and his family. It is home to a little under 22,000 people. Its median income is $26,000; and 32% of its children live below the poverty line. There's some good work happening there already in the community and business development spaces, but it could definitely use a shot in the arm.

The question is the form that shot in the arm should take. Considering this question without falling into the traditional trap that it would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a huge dent is tough, but absolutely necessary.

This brings me to 123 S. Queen St.

An old retail space with nearly 2300 sq. ft., 123 S. Queen St. is listed as having a tax value of $9,600. Though there is always a difference between tax value (assessed by local government) and appraised value (arrived at by local real estate appraisers), it's unlikely that this building would sell for more than $25,000 (or that its owner would object to that payment). Let's tack on $25,000 for materials and specialized upgrades/renovations (and hundreds of volunteer hours) to make it a clean $50,000 (a very generous estimate).

Now, let's pivot and imagine what could be. With $50,000, this could become...

• a co-working space where local non-profits and small business could collaborate on local and regional initiatives,
  
• a children's theater and arts space,
• a start-up incubator for companies looking to better serve a rural market, or
• countless other spaces that could multiply Kinston's present value (economic and beyond)

Whatever a particular community judges as best for itself isn't as important so much as establishing that a project styled in this manner is not only entirely reasonable, it is incredibly necessary. Catalyzing growth through crowdfunding would have a marginally greater impact in Kinston than almost anywhere else in the country. The next step down the road - establishing a roadmap or model for other small towns to pursue a similar path themselves - wouldn't be that tough, either. It's not crazy to imagine that projects and growth like this could become the norm, spiderwebbing into hundreds of directions. Together, we know thousands of people who know thousands of people who care about places like Kinston. If they have the internet and $20, they can help.

And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this isn't a choice. It is. If we don't reconsider the value of the rural South, we will suffocate its history, ignore its value, and willfully cement the increasing urban/rural class divides. That's not a future I care to be a part of, and I have to wonder if places like 123 S. Queen St. are the key to drastically altering the landscape of the rural Southeast.

A group down payment of $50,000 could help destroy a mindset about where growth can and should happen, and who should have a seat at the table. 

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I've made some small adjustments to how I'm spreading the word and wanted to quickly share my thinking and guidance for how YOU can contribute!

Greenfield Southeast content, at least as I understand it at this point, is beginning to fall into two buckets. For now, I'll call them "interesting reads" and "commentary". That may change down the line, but I'll cross that bridge later.  The Facebook page will continue to be where you can find 100% of what's posted, because I'm not crazy enough to think that people check the blog daily (...yet. And if you do, thank you!). I'll post blog entries (commentary) over there once they're done so that interested readers can easily find them. (I'm also working on my personal sharing settings to avoid double posts for some of you.)

There are also two growing groups of potential contributors that I'd like to acknowledge and give some guidance to.

Group 1: I have a relevant/interesting article to share!
Great! Just post it to the Facebook page; and if it looks like something that makes sense to post widely, I'll do it as quickly as my normal life schedule allows.

Group 2: The blog is really missing an entry about ________________.
Let me know! I'm open to the idea of guest posts or suggestions. I'm one guy with a full-time job and one perspective; and the more dimensions we can add to the blog, the better.

Ultimately, though, Greenfield Southeast as a blog/FB page cannot be an end in and of itself. My hope is that its real worth will be through readers arriving at a better understanding of the human development crisis currently plaguing the southeast (mostly) out of the public eye AND being inspired to take action to help increase quality of life for everyone living in Southern small towns.

There are four hundred years of history at work here. It's taken the work of many already and will take the effort of many more to build a better life for the 20 million people living in our region's small towns. I hope that y'all are finding this writing sustaining and thought-provoking and a helpful piece of a much broader effort.

Thanks as always for reading,

Travis

Most people driving through Plymouth, North Carolina on US Hwy 64 on their way back from the Outer Banks wouldn't think twice. They'd pass Pines Elementary, the Golden Skillet, the Super 8, the Bojangles and be on their way. Maybe they'd mention how it's funny that North Carolina has a Plymouth, too. If they had to make a pit stop, they would have already done so up the road in Columbia, a "nice" town - albeit smaller. 

They may catch a glimpse of the agricultural research center on the way into town; but they would almost certainly miss the downtown riverfront boardwalk and the historical marker denoting the capture of Plymouth in 1864.  And all the while - Plymouth, with its $24,000 median income and near-complete dependency on a paper mill for employment - would continue to slip further and further into an economic abyss.

Much of this behavior can be attributed to how the typical person interprets time (especially on a road trip) - most of us think there's never enough time to do what needs to be done, so who has time to stop and read some marker anyway? Much less spend significant time and money in a place like this.

Another more extreme and less innocuous mindset is manifest when a visitor refers to small towns as "backwaters" whose inhabitants simply aren't smart enough to jump a sinking ship. No matter that they may have a strong personal connection or, conversely, may lack the resources to leave.

This behavior and its many shades speaks to how we perceive value. What would a small town like Plymouth have to offer a visitor anyway? Probably very little, the thinking goes. Pity seems the most logical reaction for those who have to live there.

It makes no sense why we would continue to willfully and carelessly badmouth towns like Plymouth. And I believe we do so at our own risk, as Plymouth is one of hundreds of towns in shockingly similar economic and social circumstances throughout the South.

It's reasonable to assume that every community has unique assets and potential to create. Communities are collections of people, anchored around a place or other connective element. So my first assumption flows logically from another - all individuals have unique assets to share and deep potential to create. A community's power, therefore,  lies in its ability to generate opportunities as an outgrowth of the connections its residents share. As a country,though, we tend to ignore the potential of towns like Plymouth to generate growth, assuming that growth is somehow impossible anywhere outside of a major city.

For Plymouth - a semi-remote, rural, Southern town in need of a good jolt to stay alive, not to mention thrive - to become this kind of community there must be, above all, wider acknowledgement that its community has its own unique assets and potential to create.  Everything else - long-range planning, policy initiatives, small business efforts, and other needed measures - will only reach their greatest potential if they are conducted within that frame. From a state and regional perspective, it will only be when this frame and measures aligned to it become commonplace that towns like Plymouth will begin to show measurable gains towards increased quality of life.

There are nearly 24 million people living in towns smaller than 20,000 in the South. Casually ignoring the potential of those towns, not to mention the growing disparities between urban and rural quality of life, is a perilous habit that we must break.

When I moved to the Mississippi Delta, I did so with the understanding that I was entering into a narrative much greater than myself. More than any other time in my life, I became a student of a place and its history; and I sought to examine my hopes and motivations through a critical, historical lens.

For someone who was not native to the area, a critical asset in my game of catch up was the canon of literature that strives to tell the story of the Delta - books like The Most Southern Place on Earth, Rising Tide, Lanterns on the Levee, Confederacy of Silence, and Dixie. These books, among others, sped me along during my four years there and helped me make deeper meaning of the time I spent in that tormented, beautiful place.

Now that we've moved to Eastern North Carolina, I've found myself wondering how I might play that same game of catch up. My immediate ties are deeper to this region - my wife and her family are from here, but making meaning of this area seems to be more difficult in the literary arena. A simple Google search brings up mostly books related to the Outer Banks, nature, and Nicholas Sparks. 

Today, I learned that Google was the wrong place to look. While on a school visit, I stumbled into an ambassador of history - Rev. William Barber, President of the North Carolina NAACP and former student body president of Plymouth High School in Plymouth, NC. Rev. Barber has been a loyal steward of the burgeoning Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, which is a reaction to the regressive state legislation that was passed over the summer.

And suddenly history was all around me. I'm recalling much from memory and apologize for any errors, but here's what I learned:

During the latter portion of the Civil War, Plymouth, NC was the first free area in North Carolina after Gen. Sherman marched through.

During Reconstruction, the state government established a normal college in Plymouth that was intended to educate residents of the majority-black area of the state. This university was ultimately uprooted by Gov. Aycock in 1902 and merged with what is now Elizabeth City State University.  (As it so happens, this one maneuver echoes into the present day. Elizabeth City is much less centrally located in the region, while a college in Plymouth would have been much more readily available to uneducated blacks who had a deep need for the services such an institution would provide.)

More recently, when he was entering kindergarten in the late 1960s, Rev. Barber's parents moved back from Indianapolis to Plymouth (where his father's family is from) with the express aim of integrating the elementary school in Plymouth. And in high school, a young Rev. Barber became the first student body president to break the model of one white/one black SBP and become president of the entire student body. His mom - who still works at Plymouth High and greets me kindly whenever I visit - was the first black office manager at the high school. 

I'm walking to my car, and I'm suddenly in the middle of a history lesson. I decided right then that this was only the start, and I told Mrs. Barber that I was going to be back in two weeks - this time with a recorder and a listening ear. She smiled.

The past four hundred years have seen marked, absolute advances in American quality of life. Through means progressive (The Great Society) and destructive (The Civil War/The Trail of Tears), proactive (The Transcontinental Railroad) and reactive (The Marshall Plan), the American citizenry has grown through fits and starts to an overall improved state of well-being. (I maintain this truth while acknowledging that the human costs were, at times, appalling and reprehensible - not to mention avoidable; but that's not the focus of this entry.)

During this time period, our conception of poverty has also dramatically evolved through these general stages in the United States (at least according to those who could actually read and write and get published):

• Pre-Independence - Ignored
• Independence to the mid-20th Century - Explained Away
• Mid-20th Century to present - Considered & Addressed (by some, some of the time, in some ways)

This encroachment of poverty into our collective consciousness is further manifest through a Google Ngram search of the term.

Unfortunately, with dramatic advances have come horrifying side-effects and more recently, a frightening return to Gilded Age-style income inequality. Despite advances in absolute well-being and consciousness, tens of millions of Americans continue to live in poverty.

And yet, to the lay observer who believes this is a wrong and something should be done about it, the term “poverty” is actually of little practical use. Sure, the child poverty rate and other established rates are helpful statistics; but I am increasingly concerned that we as Americans are more comfortable shining a light on poverty without really knowing what we are talking about, which means it's also become a euphemism. If you look closely, you'll see that it’s an all-too-easily driven vehicle for the college educated to speak about a poorer, browner other - both domestically and abroad - and oversimplify the hopes, wants, and needs of anyone deemed as falling into that group.  Intent and awareness aside, I believe we can agree that this is not a type of progress we want.

And though POVERTY!!!! is effective at grabbing attention, it's also a term that's tough to grab hold of and dissect. Is whoever brought it up talking about income? Dependence on government assistance? How persistent health problems can make it impossible to keep a job? Unemployment?

In short, I find its use to be limited, which brings me to the point of writing all of this. In the murky world of social impact, the problem must be specifically and clearly defined.  It's the difference between saying "Wow, so many businesses have moved away since I was a kid," and "Median income in our county has dropped $3000 in the past fifteen years." And specificity about the problem at hand makes isolating causes and crafting solutions for individual communities a much more purposeful process. 

In an effort to better understand the broad state of things, I have found myself gravitating to the American Human Development Index. It considers three indicators - health, education, and economy.  Life expectancy, educational attainment, and median income are the primary indicators, among numerous others. It's more specific than "poverty," which I appreciate, though it's worth mentioning that this is only statistical data; and anecdotal data is also needed. The upside, though, is that this lens for understanding quality of life makes it easier to seek out and clarify needs and narratives of individuals and groups in a way that an effort to "understand poverty" really doesn't. 

It should come as no surprise that this index is not kind to the South.   Over the next twenty years, I believe that organizations seeking social impact that consciously match up data with narratives in the South to determine the way forward will bring about the most absolute good. I also believe that a fundamental piece of their strategy will be to focus their work around those human development indicators.

But that is simply a means to an end. My greatest hope is that the South becomes a place where progressive change is commonplace and ownership of that change is continually relinquished to those whom it is most likely to affect.