PBS documentary focuses on rural education in South Carolina town with high poverty rate

A PBS documentary premiering March 17 allows viewers to "experience a year in the life of one small Southern town, two schools that work primarily with low-income children and one family’s efforts to break the generational cycle of poverty," says a blog post by one of the documentary's producers, reports Valerie Strauss for The Washington Post.

"180 Days: Hartsville" focuses on Hartsville, S.C., a town with a population just under 8,000, 46 percent of whom are African American. In the late 1800s, Hartsville was home to cotton plantations that relied on slave labor, writes Horace Fraser Rudisill for the Darlington County website.