Understanding South Carolina’s Mind Blowing Rural Poverty

if you look at a list of the poorest states in america you're going to see something quite noticeable many of our most economically challenged areas are in the deep south places like mississippi arkansas alabama tennessee and south carolina and yes i'm aware that all of these also happen to be some of our most staunchly republican states as well there are books written about the reason for the abject poverty in the deep south just as there are entire books which discuss the solutions but the simple answer is the south has always been poor well not the rich land owners and aristocrats they've always had money there's a lot of money down here in the deep south it's just not equally distributed the general population here has never really had an opportunity for success the areas relied on agriculture and manufacturing forever now while all of the white collar and industrialized jobs were up north today farming has become modernized and a lot of the manufacturing jobs have gone overseas we know all about that i spent some time in the poorest part of south carolina an area here in the northeastern part of the state much of this part of the state sure has fallen on hard times in many areas like this in south carolina you'll see communities where a third of residents live in poverty there's a term for rural areas like this in the south that are very poor they're called dirt road democrats soon we're going to be joined by a resident of this part of the state a woman named wanda green who also lived in poverty but worked very hard to get out of her situation she also has some perspective on why her county is struggling so badly but for now we're going to discuss what's happening here and what needs to change so this region can recover right now we're driving in florence this is a large city for northern south carolina there's 38 000 people here today and some of the neighborhoods here are some of the poorest in this whole state the poverty rate here in florence is twice the national average one in four people here relies on food stamps or welfare to get by but that's nothing compared to some of the most rural parts of south carolina where we'll spend most of our time for example this is mccall south carolina here 28 percent of the population lives in poverty mccall and another community we'll visit are here in marlborough county which is a mostly rural poverty stricken county right on the north carolina state line mccall only has 2100 people and the population has dropped by more than 30 percent since the year 2000 one in 10 residents in mccall are part of the pd native american indian tribe as we know the native american population traditionally earns far less than needed to survive but most of the population here are descendants of former cotton or lumber farmers and those times peaked years ago the average household here in mccall brings in about 22 000 of course inflation in the form of higher gas and food prices hits these people the hardest so 22 000 for mom and dad goes far less than it did even a year ago but you can't necessarily just assume these folks are unhappy while living paycheck to paycheck around welfare in a place like california can seem like a real drag down here in the south it's just a way of life it's just the way it's always been families down here are close-knit and neighbors work together here you'll often see smiles on the faces of people in this part of the country no matter how empty their bank accounts are now i've been introducing the idea of us to consider moving back to small towns in the country in a series of videos i've called tiny town 2.0 the idea is small towns are pretty much the last affordable option for people looking to escape big cities they're usually safer and there's far less drama in places like this however this small town is just not ready for middle class families to consider i definitely wouldn't recommend this region of the state for people to relocate to as a way to reboot their lifestyles not yet anyways now we're going to show more of mccall later in this video but remember earlier when i talked about the history of the south have you ever heard of sherman's march towards the end of the civil war a union general named william t sherman set out to destroy the southern infrastructure and way of life he marched through a lot of the deep south and wrecked everything in his path and look at the map of where sherman marched it went right through this area we're driving through right now clearly they haven't recovered just 10 miles down the road from mccall is a larger and even poorer community this is bennettsville the county seat of marlborough county the downtown area of veniceville is actually kind of charming in its own way although many of the businesses here left years ago and there's no sign they're coming back the population here is around 7 700 people but one in five people left town within the last 10 years alone there just aren't a lot of opportunities in small town south carolina kids no longer stick around and work the family business or on farms a lot of kids who grow up here leave town as soon as they're able to an example of that is this guy who was a well-known actor from parks and recreation he got out of here when he was 18. in veniceville the poverty rate's even higher than in nearby mccall almost one out of every three members of the community lives below the poverty line here that's almost triple the national average the schools here very much underfunded even for south carolina standards there was a hospital in town years ago but it closed its doors because a lot of people here didn't have insurance a lot of the homes we'll see driving around bennettsville are around ten thousand dollars can you imagine that in today's america buying a home with land for 10k sure it's super cheap here but there's nothing to do for stimulation you'd have to work from home many of the people along these streets do not have the ability to work from home because they just don't have the skills check this chart out this is a list of every county in south carolina based on the number of college graduates at the bottom is marlborough county where less than 1 in 10 people completed college of course college can be a waste of time and it's hugely overpriced but the road out of poverty goes through a college education these days and then there's a lot of technology challenges here too a lot of the homes here don't have updated computers or reliable internet here's a photo of how bennettsville used to look in the 1960s back when this area was thriving today it's far less prosperous now there's programs in place to help revive rural communities like the ones we're passing through here in rural south carolina there's a rural resource coalition of south carolina which has a budget to stimulate the economy and help rebuild the schools and bring in jobs and bring people back to the area but the biggest challenges are getting the word out about these programs so people know where they can get assistance and just helping people navigate the complex systems in general if these rural communities in south carolina don't change their ways it's just gonna get worse here there aren't any families lining up to move here to take advantage of the cheap housing there aren't a lot of companies working on plans to bring jobs to the area can you imagine how this place will look in the next generation will much of rural south carolina just get wiped off the map in 50 years because at the rate we're going now there won't be anyone left here one day now we're going to talk to somebody who was born and raised here in this part of the state her name's wanda green she has insight into what it's like to live in these rural south carolina communities she says folks down here need to change their mindset and change their ways because nobody's just going to come down here and fix things for them they need to fix it themselves their ships are off course so she says they need to get out of their boat of despair and change their own lives because despite whatever little government or non-profit solutions are available it's going to take an individual effort to make change and reimagine a life out of rural poverty okay everybody so right now we're being joined by miss wanda green she is a south carolina native she grew up in rural south carolina and she's an author and an entrepreneur she has a book that's called get out of the boat and we're going to talk about your book in a little bit wanda but i just want to say thanks for coming on a call it's nice to meet you nice to meet you as well and thank you for having me yeah so i spent some time up in your you live up in northwestern south carolina um i spent some time up there for a day i live in north carolina so i drove over and i i drove around and i was looking at the area you know it seems like a lot of that area has really fallen on hard times up there in that part of the state um why why is it so challenged up there in in your neck of the woods up in right on the north carolina south carolina border well i live in florence though and i see that they have so many hiring signs here they're doing pretty good here in florence i would think but on the north carolina south carolina border like dylan and marlborough county those have always been some challenged areas because they don't have a lot of businesses there and then they don't have a public transportation system to be able to get the people to um their prospective jobs so i think dylan county if i'm not mistaken dylan county is one of the poorest counties in south carolina it is yeah i think 30 percent of folks up there if not more are are live in poverty up there yes why is it from a loss of agriculture jobs does it go back to way back in the early 1900s when the area was thriving when tobacco and cotton fields were a big deal and then mechanization came in and they don't need as many people to work in the fields or like how did that area become so poor i don't know um the man who owns the south of the border i know you probably passed by that of music i can't remember his name but i know that he's deceased now he owned just about everything in dylan county and um and i guess he was responsible for um a lot of the employment there but i know people who lived in dylan who lived in marlborough county they would actually drive about an hour to come to florence or darlington just to work it's just always been like that i don't know why but um it's always been like that and i you know i i just don't understand because they're you know they're right on the border of north carolina as well so you would think that if they had cheap rent in south carolina they could just travel about 20 or 30 minutes to get to north carolina to make a better living i just think that it's a lack of transportation and probably education because um dylan high school just recently got a high school built um and i think that was only within the last five years and that was one of the worst high schools um in um um in south carolina yeah do you think that part of the state's been neglected i think so to a certain extent i cannot um i can honestly say too that um they're having some challenges because when i used to do transportation i'm taking people to their doctor's appointments i would go to while i was waiting on them to go to their doctor's appointments i would go to the public library um just to use the restroom to use the computer you know while i waited on them and whereas a lot of other other counties that had public libraries they would allow you to use the the computer as a guest with dylan county will allow you to use their computers for uh about 30 minutes and after that you would have to pay a dollar an hour just to use their computers in dylan county because they needed the money for the library do you feel that the area has been neglected in terms of job growth and opportunity i would think so and just like i said when you see south of the border that used to be a booming place one time they used to be as big as heroines where you have people traveling up and down 95 and everybody would stop but since they hadn't done any renovations in a while then um a lot of people don't stop and so if the people are not stopping then the people in the community don't have a job at least not there what do most of the people up there do for work there's not a lot i mean there's some retail there's some fast food places that's about it and just like i said um i used to be a social worker for many years as well and i had a co-worker he would travel an hour from that area to come to florence just to work as a social worker yeah how does an area like this improve um how do they fix things because you drive around some parts of where i was at up near north of you and it's just there's really not a lot going on there's there's block after block of homes that are in disrepair yeah i'm thinking too just like i said um i was i often discussed with others and i was like well if the south of the border was such a booming business at one time i was thinking that if a place like carowinds or six flags would come and buy that property and you know and you know give them that franchise name that would probably bring about a hundred jobs here too now i don't know if you are aware i don't know if you saw it in the news lately um just um down i-95 north probably about 30 minutes away from dylan they are going to be blessed with a company called book i think it's bookies it's a company out of texas and they said they're going to be hiring 200 people and they're paying between 15 and 22 dollars per hour so that's going to be a blessing to the area as well yeah so so all the people that live in these rural counties where it's there's not a lot of opportunities and and a lot of people are poor why wouldn't they just move away why do they stay in these because i i can i can give you that i can tell you a lot about that being a social worker i always one of the biggest challenges that i had when i used to be a social worker years ago is breaking the cycle if you had grandma doing it like this mom doing it like this this is all they know and that's one of the things that i even talk about in my book get out the boat and this is it telling you to get out of the boat of despair and it basically is trying to tell you that um find out what your purpose is and whatever you're doing if it's not working for you then you need to change something but when you're dealing with people who have the mindset you know they don't have the mindset because of their surroundings then they can't that they can't do any better they don't know to do any better mm-hmm what what what's the mindset of the people that live up there that you you're a social worker you talk to these people a lot what's their mindset it's like just like i said they always say like what grandma did it if grandma got food stamps and welfare and that's was that was the way that she survived that mom is going to do the same thing and that was one of the biggest challenges that i had is because they were so used to getting by on governmental assistance that when you try to talk with them about you know having a better life about going to school or doing something different there they couldn't understand the concept it's like this is what's been happening this is what's been working for my family for years and for years and i'm going to continue to stay in the boat i'm not going to get out i'm not going to do anything different because it is a scary thing to be able to step out and do something different and i often tell people of course you're going to fail sometimes but guess what you think about abraham lincoln do you think about a lot of the presidents who ran for the um the presidency they didn't become the president on the first try i think abraham lincoln tried about two or three times and stuff before he became president mm-hmm yeah is it just a matter then of folks um people just taking the enough to care about these people to kind of counsel them on on giving them some positive thinking and well you can do all the counseling that you want and this like i said that's what caused me to be burnt out as a social worker after 18 years i found myself working harder than them i had hopes i had dreams for them but unless they change their mindsets i couldn't do anything with them now i do have one good story about a young lady she lives in sumter which is probably about an hour and a half away from dylan county she and i actually saw her probably about two months ago and she came up to me and she said oh that's you miss wanda and i said yeah and she said i remember i remember this young lady her name is lillian i remember when she was under the influence of drugs and alcohol and she was receiving assistance from dss and she had small children and now all of her children are grown she no longer has a problem with drugs and alcohol as a matter of fact she is a supervisor over a cleaning company that goes to some of the big plants in sumter and she's in the she is in the position to hire to hire and to fire people and i told her i was so proud of her because i remember when i worked with her in the early 2000s in the epic commission on alcohol and drug abuse she was another one that was in the vote of despair and she says now she is definitely doing well and she's trying to reach back and she's trying to help the others who are in the vote of despair as well yeah i i think a lot of these communities just need somebody to care about them and give them some positive encouragement um and let them know that it can be done it's gonna take hard work it's not easy and it can be scary and they needed help and at the time when i was a program manager with the commission on alcohol and drug abuse my budget was over a hundred thousand dollars a year so as long as they were coming to their counseling appointments and they were receiving services from the department of social services i could if they wanted to find a job i could help them with resumes i was able to help them with work clothes and i was able to be able to pay for transportation for them to get back and forth until they could provide their own transportation so sometimes people just need a push and sometimes people just need a little help in hand and they need to want to change yes and you in the mindset she had a mind to change and she said that her children are doing well and when i saw her she was doing well as well that's good a lot of people in the country think that welfare keeps people down you know i mean you you deal with these people that generational grandma got welfare so i'm going to get welfare yeah how do you feel about that well just like i said it was a problem with breaking the cycle i think that welfare was something good to be it's like a stepping stone as a matter of fact my i have an undergraduate degree in um a bachelor of arts degree in sociology and as a matter of fact one of my classmates at the time she was receiving a welfare check and she was receiving wic because she has small children but she said that's not the end of the story for me she said that's why i'm that's why i'm here in college because i want to better my situation and guess what she did good we love to hear stories about that's right getting out of the boat and we'll get to the book in a second i have one more question for you so how do you feel about the way our country's headed miss wanna um well from a christian i'll say from a scripture a christian's perspective i realize that a lot of things are going to happen you know like the bible always says that we're always going to have the poor with us so a lot of things that are going on now you know they've been prophesied already but one thing that i can honestly say is that i appreciate the government helping us right at the covet with the stimulus checks but for the um the individuals who are continuing to get the checks i think there needs to be some type of accountability i think that you need to be able to show what you have done with the money that you've gotten so far in order in order to qualify to get more that's just my personal opinion i agree with you how toxic is it that we're fighting the political infighting between republicans and democrats to the point that it's on social media it's on tv you can't talk about something with somebody that stranger or even a family member without turning a big fight how bad is that in your opinion for our for our growth of our country oh well it's not good it's not good but one of the things that i wanted to definitely say is you have to have determination and one of my stories was um that you you'll read about in the book is i remember that my parents have always been a democrat and i remember like it was yesterday that jimmy carter would give us the free peanut butter and and um he would give us the um the cheese and i remember when ronald reagan came and he was a republican he wanted to cut out those programs as a matter of fact that was back in the 80s and i remember like it was yesterday that my dad was disabled and i think i had another year or two to go in high school and ronald reagan being a republic um republican he said that you know they usually give you a check the child under 18 years old they would give you a check at least until you graduated from college you know because you had a disabled parent and i remember ronald reagan coming and he cut that check off at 18 he said when the child gets 18 years old they will no longer be able to get that check and i said you know what me and my mom probably missed that check but guess what i did not let that stop me at the age of 18 i remember cashing that check for the last but my mom out yeah was i getting my mom cashed that check for the last time and guess what that did not stop me from being able to go right across the street to mars college and getting a bachelor of arts degree so it's it's a mindset you have to decide it doesn't make any difference what part of the um what your situation is or what your circumstances are or it's up to you it is making a difference what party you belong to it's up to you if you decide that you want to do something better with your life amen to that miss wanda green miss wanna green a combination of faith and hard work and change in your mindset yes i don't i'm really glad i got to talk to you i think hey where so what's the website again where people can order your book www or either you can just put wanda green enterprises make sure you put the llc behind it and it'll take you to the website and just like i said if you want an inspirational um nugget or you want me to speak for about 15 minutes i can speak with you about the different fees that i charge and of course um one of the things that i had the website the developer to do is to make sure that i collect the money for the shipping as well as for the taxes we just added all in one bundle and it's going to be 25 and that's going to cover everything i'm trying to keep you all happy and trying to keep uncle happy uncle sam happy all at the same time yeah that's a that's a steal 25 bucks for a great inspirational book yeah thanks for for not only telling us about your your story but enlightening people on what it's like in in rural south carolina and kind of giving people an understanding of you know they just need to change their mindset they're poor their opportunities but there are opportunities they just need to just change their mindset and get out of combine yes get out of the boat thank you miss wanna green i appreciate that and thank you so talk about your book a little bit yeah get out of the boat you're an author a lot you've mentioned some some um some themes that you from the book is just get out the boat and i'm telling you it's my it's my inspirational story of how i got out of the boat of despair and like i was telling you a little bit earlier about my journey with having um one parent was a domestic worker and my dad was disabled but i still was able to go to morris college and the way that i got to college is because i had i was pretty much an average student and you know the guidance counselors they tend to lean towards all of the children who are making the dean's not the dean's list over who are making who are going to get the scholarships for college and so in 1986 when i was a senior my mom told me she said i need for you to after high school you need to go get a job or you need to get some type of trade well i have no clue about what i really wanted to do i kind of wanted to be a teacher but i would always have friends around me to discourage me and they said oh you're not in college classes and you can't do this and you can't do that so i really didn't have any direction after high school but one day i heard on the loudspeaker come to the office we have this college connection program and i said well i don't have anything to lose and i said morris college is right across the screen from me and when i went to the guidance counselor's office they said we have a college connection program which is now called the upward bound program and it kind of gives you insight on the benefits of going to college and at that time my sister started college though but she didn't finish and my brother was in the military and so i said you know what i don't have anything to lose and i ended up going to that program in the summertime and when i went i ended up making new friends i found out the benefits of going to college we got the opportunity to visit different colleges even in other states and so i said this looks like something is stuff that i you know this is like something i want to do and my shirt is kept i don't know why my shirt is acting up but anyway to make a long story short um at the end of the first semester i got a bill for about two or three thousand dollars told my mom about it and of course she was a domestic worker and she said well i don't have the money so i ended up going to myrtle beach south carolina taking a two hour trip every day on the bus and i remember going there every day to clean up that's i would have to leave at six o'clock in the morning and come back at three o'clock in the aft six o'clock in the afternoon and i remember cleaning those rooms and i remember crying out to god and at the time i wasn't even a christian i said god i said i appreciate the honest living i would get paid on wednesday i would get in contact with a friend we would go to the mall by a little you know some clothes and stuff but i was never satisfied and i cried out i said lord i don't have the two or three thousand dollars though but i desire to be able to go to college and i want to be able to do something more than what my parents did or my siblings and guess what about a week or two before school started one of the academic counselors called me and said um miss wanda are you coming back to school and i said no i owe two or three thousand dollars and i said she said no that's a credit i said what she said that's a credit and i was able to get back into morris college and i graduated in 1990 and i've spent 17 years as a social worker until i had some health issues and after that i decided that i wanted to use some of my other gifts and talents and of sales and marketing so that was about getting out of the boat yes getting out of the boat well give people a brief um so get out of the boats or book and you've talked about some themes in it a little bit already give people a brief uh rundown of what the book's about so that i can send people over to maybe buy your book well that's what i'm telling you what it is a book when i was having a financial difficulties when i had to um um just receive unemployment i'm telling you though just like i told you i didn't have money for the application fee they didn't worry about it though they told me it would be waived until i got my um student loan money i talked about some domestic violence issues that i was having when i was i think it was when i was still at morris college i was in an unhealthy relationship i talk about how god allowed me to get out of that relationship and then i talk about one of the biggest moves of my life moving from one city to another without even a place to stay and like i said was able to get a master of arts degree in management and leadership from one of the best business schools in the world webster university and start two businesses at the age of 50. i have two businesses lydia's inspirational gourmet cookies and i have the best-selling book that has sold over 350 copies since october of last year called get out the boat and i also have a new website at wanda green enterprises llc and you need to check it out not only do i sell books but also i do a lot of um inspirational speeches by zoom to a lot of civic um organizations as well as to church groups and most of the women that are attracted to this book in my story are usually women who are over 35 because they said that i am telling their story and they can identify with getting out of the boat of despair and my shirt is kept though i don't know why my shirt is acting up but anyway to make a long story short are you looking to move and need advice i do consulting that's right i'll sit down and talk about where the next perfect place for you and your family should be i do it all the time together let's find you a new home that's safe and checks all your boxes you can get my email in the description to find out how i can help you find your perfect relocation and i can also help you find your new house too email me and i'll work with you i'm not just helping you figure out where to move but i can help you find your perfect home too that's right i know awesome reliable agents all over the country and i'd love to connect you to somebody who can help you search for that perfect home hey everyone so it's pretty clear by now that elected leaders aren't going to help you if you don't like what you saw in this video demanding change won't work you're going to have to do it on your own if you want to be safe and want your community to be a place where people want to live you're going to have to clean the place up yourselves you're going to have to work with your friends and neighbors to lower crime politicians clearly don't care as much anymore it's up to us this is sage nyx manager this has been a corner house entertainment production

Channel: Nick Johnson

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Id: khsSf0wBn3g

Length: 31min 55sec (1915 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2022