Though it has been a couple of days since we did our walking tour of the George Washington Carver Homes-a housing project in Selma, AL-for me this is one of the most important and profound parts of this class.
The GWC Homes was the staging area for the Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March of 1965. There were several reasons for this. First, its physical proximity to the Edmund Pettis Bridge…it is only 6 blocks away. Second, there are three churches in the GWC Homes which were natural gathering places for marchers who were led by the preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr. (he preached in at least two of the churches rallying the marchers). And, third, the people living in the GWC Homes were precisely the people that the march was designed to liberate: the vulnerable: they were African American and poor.
Walking through the GWC Homes I saw children playing, I saw mothers hanging out laundry, and I saw young, African American men who should have been at school or work simply “hanging out”. Walking through the GWC Homes in 2007 reminds me of the writings of sociologists like Elijah Anderson, William J. Wilson, and Erik O. Wright. All three describe the outcomes of cordoning off a class of people, the underclass, into ghettos that leave them cut-off and isolated from the economic, political, and social life of society.
The sociologist William J. Wilson in his book on “Work” speaking to the issue of joblessness puts it this way:
For the first time in the twentieth century most adults in many inner-city ghetto neighborhoods are not working in a typical week. The disappearance of work had adversely affected not only individuals, families, and neighborhoods, but the social life of the city at large as well. Inner-city joblessness is a severe problem that is often overlooked or obscured when the focus is placed mainly on poverty and its consequences. (Wilson, 1996:xiii)
The terrible irony of the GWC Homes is that the people who live there now are the very people, or look like the very people, who the marchers intended to liberate: the GWC Homes is still a ghetto in which to cordon-off poor African American men, women, and children. The second irony is that they are named for a many who worked so hard to liberate this group: George Washington Carver: scientist, inventor, and leader of Tuskegee University.
Later that same day we traveled on the bus to the gulf coast of Mississippi, to Bay St. Louis-Waveland. The closer we got to the coast the more we could see the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Katrina came on shore at on the outskirts of Waveland. 80-90% of the housing in these communities was destroyed. Thousands and thousands of people were displaced and left homeless. Nearly two years later Bay St. Louis still has no grocery store. Most people still do not have mail delivery to their homes (if they have moved back in) or their FEMA trailers. I assume this is because mailboxes are technically federal property and the federal government has to re-establish mail service.
Though the communities are starting to rebuild, in many ways the area looks the same as it did in the days and weeks after the Hurricane hit. It is hard to imagine the devastation until you see it first hand.
As the people we met her talked with sheer joy about the day the Bay Bridge re-opened (it re-opened last week nearly 22 months after the Hurricane), I didn’t quite grasp the importance of this bridge. As I listened more and asked questions I learned that when the bridge was closed the city of Bay St. Louis was essentially cut off from the economic, political, and social life of society. Citizens of Bay St. Louis were cut off from the only hospital that had re-opened, from the only grocery store that had re-opened, from the only place their mail would be delivered. They were cut off from their jobs. And, though their cordoning-off was perhaps not as severe as it is for those living in the George Washington Carver Homes, they could get to a grocery store or a hospital, they were cut off symbolically and their lives were significantly impacted. What had been a 10 minute drive to work or the local hospital for an emergency became a 40 or 50 minute drive. Yes, they could get to the hospital, but that distance would make survival in an emergency (a heart attack or stroke) significantly less likely. Though they could drive to a grocery store they might have trouble getting there during the limited hours the store operated after the Hurricane (or the “storm” as they refer to it), making it more difficult to keep a refrigerator full of nutritious food.
This experience, while different, can be compared to that of the citizens of the GWC Homes who had Louis’s store, a 100 square foot building with no air conditioning, in the middle of the project, where they could by Vienna Sausages or Three Musketeer’s bar, but where they could not buy fresh fruits and vegetables or lean meats….the ingredients necessary for a healthy, nutritious diet.
Cordoning-off and isolation happen in many different ways and to many different people. These last two days have shown me that though different in scale, the experience of being cordoned off is devastating, no matter what the cause or the magnitude.
Hey Emma: Congrats on passing the Algebra EOC J
Hey Trav: Good luck as you prepare for your finals!
Love you both…mom
