Opinion: Now that it's a national holiday, Juneteenth needs to retain the historic textures of long-held local observances

NYT illustration by Noel Spiva, photos by Getty Images

Historian and author Tiya Miles shares childhood memories of her family's Juneteenth celebrations before the day became a national holiday. She draws from Montana's rich Black history for an insightful reframing of how the holiday could be nationally celebrated without commercial gimmicks. A condensed version of her New York Times opinion piece is below. The full version is here.

The signing of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law in 2021 was an expression of real progress in the collective understanding of the Black struggle that reinforced our national ideals of liberty and dignity. But I confess my ambivalence. I am worried about what official national recognition might do to what has always been a community-based holiday.

My own memories of Juneteenth, like those of so many others, are distinctly local. They are rooted in a sense of place. When I was young, that place was Eden Park, high on the hills along the Ohio River in Cincinnati, where I would spend the day contentedly with my mother and the many other families who attended. Years later, after I formed a family of my own with my spouse (who is not Black or Midwestern, but Native American from Montana), I discovered where Juneteenth events were held, who organized them and who turned out was like holding a black light to the invisible-inked map of the present and past African American community.

Juneteenth festivities have long represented tucked-away spaces, deeply local, somewhat surprising and fitted to the variances of Black life in America. They have supported micro-cultures of Black crafts and local economies of neighborhood enterprise, fostering the kind of community exchange that will be most sustainable in the future. Whether they are rural or urban, their local specificity, and their hiddenness from those who would misunderstand their gravity, have made Juneteenth events special and enduring.

Montana is largely imagined by the rest of the country as a white place, with only a glancing acknowledgment of its significant Indigenous populations and histories. But it has a long and complex Black history, which has only recently been reconstructed through a multimedia project of the Montana Historical Society. A handful of Black fur traders crossed into the Rocky Mountain West in the mid-19th century, but most African Americans migrated to Montana after the Civil War. . . . As the Black population grew in Montana in the late 19th century and early 20th century, tens of thousands of people formed communities in or near cities such as Havre, Great Falls, Butte and Helena. African American residents in the city of Butte celebrated Emancipation Day with a pilgrimage by train into the snow-peaked mountains, where they enjoyed picnics, fun and frivolities.

For the second year in a row, the Montana Historical Society, in partnership with the Holter Museum of Art and the Myrna Loy Theater, will host a free Juneteenth festival, drawing on a local history of diversity and perseverance. Based in Helena, these activities include a trolley ride (reminiscent of those Butte train rides more than a century ago), a tour of Black historic sites, and a documentary about a cross-country journey by Black soldiers of the 25th Infantry in 1897 to test whether bicycles could replace horses.

Juneteenth celebrations mounted by groups on the ground grow out of these rich histories, help us to recognize them and illuminate pathways toward greater understanding and connection where people live, work and visit. But the day's new national recognition has brought a level of commercialization that threatens to eclipse these local celebrations in all their wondrous specificity. Today we can find Juneteenth T-shirts aplenty at Walmart, a Juneteenth makeup sale courtesy of an online boutique and apparel on Etsy boasting the ironic claim 'Culture Not for Sale' in Kwanzaa colors. In just two years, we've already seen examples of how this kind of rapid commercialization can go awry. In 2021, Target had to admit that a Juneteenth display of hot sauce, Kool-Aid and watermelon 'missed the mark.'. . . When we allow corporations and distant event planners to hijack Juneteenth, we lose the texture of these various places and their particular commemorations. We share the responsibility to prevent that.

With care and concerted effort, the Juneteenth holiday might rival Thanksgiving as a new communal ritual, highlighting the value of shared freedoms as our workweek tempo slows and personal rhythms align, even as we notice and cherish the treasure of each distinct celebration. In these right-size gatherings in parks, on blocks, at town greens and city squares, we can gain so much more than kitschy displays and logo T-shirts — loneliness dispelled, neighborhoods sustained and a torn national fabric slowly darned from the inside out. For the sake of our history and maybe our country, we should let a thousand Juneteenths bloom.

Singer Tina Turner, native of tiny Nutbush, Tenn., dies at 83

Turner poses for a portrait in 1985. (Photo by 

Denize Alain, Sygma, Getty Images via CNN)

Tina Turner was born into poverty in rural West Tennessee. She first achieved musical success with her abusive husband Ike Turner, and later became a mid-life, single-act musical icon who earned the title "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll." She died Wednesday at age 83.

Born Anna Mae Bullock in the crossroads hamlet of Nutbush, Tenn., she met St. Louis band leader Ike Turner and married him in 1962. Turner was the lead singer in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, and the band released bold R&B tunes like "Nutbush City Limits" and famous covers like Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary." The couple achieved notable success opening for the Rolling Stones U.S. tour in 1969 and gaining a "certified gold" album in 1974 for "What You Hear Is What You Get." Still, the relationship soured as Ike became heavily addicted to cocaine. Tina divorced Ike in 1978.

Turner in 1970 (Wikipedia photo)

If the first half of Turner's performance career was dynamic, the second half, which began in the early 1980s, was a dynamite explosion of talent and musical energy that surprised the industry and rocketed Turner to her iconic status. In 1984, she crooned, churned and blasted audiences with her album Private Dancer, which sold over 10 million, won three Grammy awards. The album included her only number one hit, "What's Love Got to Do With It," a song that personified much of the Turner's saga of struggle and triumph.

Turner became a global star also known for her acting role alongside Mel Gibson in "Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome." In 2018, she received the Grammy Life Achievement Award. As Turner aged, she kept creating music, writing a musical, several books and collaborating with international artists. In October 2021, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She spent her last years in Zurich, Switzerland.

Here is The New York Times' list of Turner's "11 essential songs." From across the Atlantic, The Economist sees one state: "There are very few living American singers whose work springs from a distant, lost past. Dolly Parton, a titan of country music, was born in a one-room cabin by Little Pigeon River in Tennessee. Tina Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee, where her father oversaw sharecroppers; she had childhood memories of working in the cotton fields. Before she died on May 24, she was a link to the forces that shaped the blues and country and rock’n’roll." Here's Nutbush on a Google map:

Quick hits: Every crisis needs a bird; Black gospel pioneer honored; 'How to thrive when everything feels terrible' . . .

Photo by Salwan Georges, The Washington Post

In a world full of crisis, what can help? "From time to time, I read or hear reports that the world's birds are in crisis. . . . There's a cardinal outside my kitchen window, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. For a passing moment, mine were the only eyes and this was the only bird. My heart swelled, and I smiled at the bright red jacket and jet-black mask as if seeing them for the first time. Nature is such a snappy dresser. . . . One imagines all creatures in this violent world must be scrambling for camouflage or cowering in bunkers, then along comes this guy, flashy and unafraid," opines David Von Drehle of The Washington Post. "Here's where that cardinal finally lands: One cannot usefully address a threat to birds if they do not delight in individual birds. (Maybe not all of them, but some.) One cannot meaningfully answer the climate crisis if they lack excitement about the human capacity for invention and reinvention. One cannot make progress toward equality and inclusion if they don't see and love the potential of humankind — enemies included — and one cannot build the future if one fears the future."

Associated Press photo via University of Pittsburgh

"I didn't know it was going to be a legacy," Pace Barnes told Jessie Wardarski of The Associated Press. Her father was one of the nation's first African American composers of gospel music, "and the owner of one of the country's first independent, Black gospel music publishing companies," Wadarski reports. "Today, the University of Pittsburgh is restoring his work from the 1920s to the 1950s and cementing his place in the genre's history."

Meet David Mas Masumoto, a Japanese American peach farmer planning a world without him. "The legacy he'll leave behind, as a father and pioneering organic farmer, and all of the legacies that have quietly guided him here, to his family's 80-acre stone fruit and raisin farm is preserved in his book, Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm," reports Caroline Hatano of Civil Eats. "He explores the depths of his family history, uncovering long-held secrets and grappling with impossible decisions made when his family was imprisoned during World War II."

Oreo cow (Belted Galloway) with calf (Photo by Doug Young via Riversmith Farms)

Did you know that Belted Galloway is a breed of cow that looks like an Oreo cookie? And while the Oreo cookie is not a rural thing, American farmers help make them. Now American scientists have uncovered the best technique for getting to its delightful, creamy center. "MIT researchers twisted apart hundreds of Oreos to find the perfect method," reports Stacey Leasca for Food & Wine. "Who says science can't be fun?"

Rural life poses stresses and hazards that urban dwellers don't experience. This article, "How to Thrive When Everything Feels Terrible," by Christine Porath and Mike Porath in Harvard Business Review, hits the mark for people from all walks of life, particularly those in more isolated areas. "Research shows that we can protect ourselves from the damaging effects of toxicity by taking steps to ensure we are 'thriving' — a psychological term to describe the state in which people experience a sense of both vitality and learning."

In a shocking discovery, Superglue is more super than we originally thought. "Researchers turned superglue into a recyclable, cheap, oil-free plastic alternative," report Allison Christy and Scott Phillips for The Conversation, a platform for journalism by academics. "Unlike most traditional plastics, this new plastic can be easily converted back to its starting materials, even when combined with unwashed municipal plastic waste." It's a game-changer.

"Going, Going, Gone! One email to this Montana-based auction school later, I was connected with auctioneering instructor Nick Bennett," reports Caroline Carlson of The Daily Yonder. "A 2012 Western College of Auctioneering graduate, Bennett works as a professional auctioneer and appears to be the most decorated faculty member at the school. He's the 2021 International Auctioneer Champion, the 2017 U.S. Bid Calling Champion, and the 2014 Montana State Auctioneer Champion. . . . I talked to this industry legend about his rural roots, going to auction school, pre-auction nerves, and the first auction he ever called. Enjoy our conversation."

How a rural paper hits a target reader — over 60, Black, parent — when its staff has none of those characteristics

"Editors need to have a keen sense of news judgment, which requires a clear view of their publications’ target readers. But what if the target reader is over 60 years old, or African American, or a mother juggling the lives of her children and the reporting staff is young, white and single?"

So asks Buck Ryan, associate professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky, in his latest case study of the Chatham News + Record in Chatham County, North Carolina. He reports that Editor-Publisher Bill Horner III "has found a way to hurdle that challenge in award-winning fashion," getting more prizes "than any other newspaper its size from the North Carolina Press Association over the last three years."

Black History Month coverage included a story about a local woman
who had written a book about her family's white-supremacist history.

Chatham County, has a population of 75,070 people, with a Hispanic community (12%) about as large as its African American community (11%), Ryan notes. Horner has started, suspended, and revived a Spanish-language edition and talked with Ryan about appealing to Black and older residents. The county's average age is 47.

The paper has a “6 Over 60” feature in partnership with Chatham County’s Council on Aging. The paper has sponsored events for COA, which has used grant funds to buy subscriptions for senior citizens who didn’t already subscribe.

Ryan reports that the News + Record's front page "typically contains a photo or a story about someone in Chatham County’s African American community, and asked Horner to describe his approach to news coverage of that community. "We are intentional about it in part because when it comes to news—and recognition in the county—that’s an underserved population," Horner said, adding that it made  aspecial effort to make this year's Black History Month coverage better than last year's, when "in all honesty, we didn’t do a great job last year of highlighting Black history and stories."

Horner said that as the paper has reported the removal of a Confederate monument and the placing of a historical marker remembering local lynching victims, "reaction has been mixed. No question we’ve lost some readers, but we’ve gained others. But it’s news, it’s part of what’s happening in a growing and changing market, and it’s incumbent upon us to take the lead to say what’s happening and why."

Ryan's interview with Horner also touched on the paper's newsletters on parenting and other topics, its staffing, a grant-funded revival of the Spanish-language edition, and a final section titled "Literacy, Good Writing and Required Reading." Some exceprts from that:

"My best writers are those who have been the most devoted readers of books and of great reporting. I hope I can say that I push them to be better writers and reporters. There’s only so much you can teach; there has to be a willingness and a desire to get better on their part, and also the capacity to understand and instinctively know what’s really good when it comes to reporting and writing. So we talk a lot about writing and share 360-degree feedback.

"We talk about what we’re reading. I give my kids books about writing and reporting and recommend books on those subjects to them. For example, Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing is one I’ve given everyone. . . . I ask my reporters a lot of questions about word choice and sentence structure. We don’t do it as much in person; it’s mostly often done through editing on our server. As I said, I try to push. I don’t mind telling them a lede stinks; I have them read my stuff, and if my lede stinks, I want to know! . . . 

"One thing I’ll never forget from my studies at the William Allen White j-school at the University of Kansas was one of my professors, Elmer Lower, telling us that the world will always, always need people who write well. If we, as journalists, could develop into strong writers, he said, there would always be a place for us." For Ryan's full report, click here.

Six Central Arkansas communities share their African American history in an effort to help recover and preserve it

Damita Markes of Little Rock examines one of the displays.
(Photo by Staci Vandagriff, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

Arkansas 365 is a state highway that was once part of U.S. 65. It cuts through the heart of the state, from Conway to Little Rock to Pine Bluff, traversing many historic areas, including Black communities whose history has often been obscured or forgotten. To correct that, the Preservation of African American Cemeteries, an Arkansas nonprofit, launched "Project 365" with a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council. Over the weekend, leaders from six of the communities gathered for "The Big Reveal," reports Ashley Savage of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

"Those leading Project 365 hope to use cemetery transcriptions, slave narratives, oral history, church histories and photographs to better preserve African American history in the communities of Hensley, Woodson, Wrightsville, Higgins, Sweet Home and College Station," Savage reports, quoting Tamala Tenpenny-Lewis, president and co-founder of the cemeteries group: "There's not a lot of written history in these rural areas. Actually, there's really none at all. A collective history of the community is just not there."

Arkansas 365 (Wikipedia map)

Tenpenny-Lewis told Savage that the project is still seeking documentary materials, and the research relates directly to the reason her orgaization was founded: "We thought it was important to form this organization because there are so many cemeteries -- particularly in the rural South -- that are abandoned and in threat of destruction. So much of history is being lost."

The two-day presentation in the Wrightsville City Hall Gymnasium was titled "How cemeteries reveal the history of early Black communities." The event ended with luncheon for seniors who are helping with research and interviews. Ruth Hill, 93, "said she thinks efforts like Project 365 are crucial because it encourages younger people to get involved in learning and preserving the history that exists in their communities," Savage reports, quoting her: "In your past, there is somebody who has been outstanding. People are fascinated by it."

Friday's quick hits: All's quiet with rural reticence; celebrating Nina Simone; want your own Tiny Desk concert?

Nina Simone statue in Tryon, N.C. (Photo by Annie Chester)

Born in 1933, Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in the quaint Appalachian town of Tryon, North Carolina. A rare musical talent, Eunice's first stage was the church before she became the Black nationalist known professionally as Nina Simone, Expatalachians recalls. Simone's sultry, distinct voice made her famous, and she used her music to fight against injustice, penning songs like “Mississippi Goddamn," which was her response to a 1963 white-supremacist terror attack in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four young Black girls. She died in 2003.

Rural America has a magic that spills into its music. From Bluegrass to folk to Appalachian roots to harmonica duos, you name it, there's a unique spirit to it. Consider sharing that spirit and enter to have your own "Tiny Desk" performance. Rural has a lot to share.

On Friday, it's good to take a breath. Maybe take a moment to read Maddy Butcher's piece on
rural reticence. . . In the rural West, quiet reserve is an essential skill and a fading art form, lost on people, like me, who rush to react and to be heard. Inevitably, it is rapidly losing ground to a louder, vainer way of being. 

A bachelor’s degree in automotive restoration has put a tiny Kansas school on the map. At a time when college enrollments are diving, McPherson College’s enrollment has been steadily increasing. Because its program is unique, it can cast a wider net than other colleges its size; it has 851 students — up 18 percent over the last five years. Check out that 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300S Cabriolet and status symbols by the likes of Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Cary Grant and Gary Cooper.

The sign said, "Flowers are the Answer." What’s not to love? Floral foam, also known as "green fine-celled thermoset phenolic plastic foam" is particularly not lovable, writes Adrienne Mason for Hakai magazine. Flowers are beautiful, they’re natural, they lift our spirits and fill interior spaces. They let us say things without having to say too much. Mason says florists need to forget foam, embrace new—or re-embrace old—techniques, and educate their customers.

The English village of Lostwithiel is looking for a new general practitioner amid a national shortage of primary-care doctors. Residents hope a music video will do the trick. See what we did there: rural people know how to use music to create some magic. And maybe, just maybe, land a new doctor.

Do you have a friend who can do six degrees of Secretariat instead of six degrees of separation? Some people do not know a person like that, or anything about horse racing. Well, giddy up! Horse racing is set to join Netflix's stable of sports documentaries. Filming on what is understood to be a four-part series on the "Race to the Kentucky Derby" is set to start next month and the casting process has begun, with the series looking to tell the stories behind the owners, trainers, breeders, and jockeys involved.

Federal and state officials erased a Black cemetery; their only public notice was a legal ad too many people missed

Mike and David Moseley at an ancestor's grave
(Photo by Christopher Smith for ProPublica)

Construction site excavators often unearth surprises, but what comes after the find can be more disturbing.

"Nobody working to bring a $346 million Microsoft project to rural Virginia expected to find graves in the woods . . . but surveyors happened upon a cemetery. The largest of the stones bore the name Stephen Moseley in a layer of cracking plaster. Another stone, in near perfect condition, belonged to Stephen’s toddler son," reports Christopher Smith for ProPublica.

"This is not as bad as it sounds," an engineering consultant wrote in March 2014 to Microsoft and an official in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, who was helping clear hurdles for the project — an expansion of a massive data center. "We should be able to relocate these graves." But archaeologists, which federal law required, said the cemetery was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places because it was for "a community of landowners who farmed tobacco in the wake of the Civil War and Reconstruction," Smith writes. Their report "stressed the cemetery’s significance to African American life and death, citing the fact that Stephen Moseley and his relatives were Black,' and advising: "It is recommended that the area be avoided."

The county and consultants challenged the recommendation. "They sent the report to another archaeologist, seeking a second opinion," Smith writes. "But the archaeologist didn’t go along. . . he rejected the notion that some of the people buried there might be white. 'Jim Crow would not have had whites and blacks buried that closely together,' he wrote. . . . He suggested that the original firm conduct additional historical research. 'More work needs to be done on Moseley family members to identify who’s in the graves,' he wrote in an email to Jones’ boss, who forwarded it to the county. . . . The county and its consultants ignored the advice."

The county and consultants continued to pursue the property for Microsoft. They "ran a legal notice tucked among the ads and classifieds in several weekly print editions of The Mecklenburg Sun," Smith reports. "The second week the notice ran, the paper published a front-page story [about another subject] under the byline Mike Moseley. Moseley is a staff writer. He is also Stephen Moseley’s great-grandson. . . . Mike Moseley would not have been hard to locate, had the county actually tried to find Stephen Moseley’s descendants." Mike Moseley told Smith, “Everyone who works for the county knows me. They know who we are. It’s hard to understand how they didn’t come talk to us.”

When Smith asked Moseley "if he’d seen the notice in the pages of his own newspaper, he responded: 'Do you read the classifieds and the ads? I do not.' . . . Like his nephew, David Moseley heard nothing from the county about the threat to the cemetery. The soft-spoken retired schoolteacher and administrator, who is now 85, grew up on the land adjacent to where Microsoft was building its data center." He told Smith, “Somebody would have called me if they moved the cemetery."

Smith reports, "In the months after the notice that ran in The Mecklenburg Sun, workers kept finding graves, ultimately 37 of them. . . . A crew dug up each of the graves, collecting bones, casket fragments, metal handles and hinges, etched epitaph plaques, a pair of eyeglasses, an ivory comb. The remains and other items were packed in plastic crates and stored in an office. Months later, all of it was reburied in four tightly packed, $500 cemetery plots one town to the north." The county did not reply to Smith's questions about the handling of the issue, Other than County Administrator Wayne Carter saying the newspaper notice was sufficient to comply with the law.

Smith writes: "In Mecklenburg County, before Microsoft took possession of the land — for free, with significant tax breaks, along with state development dollars earmarked for struggling tobacco farming regions — the Army Corps [of Engineers] raised no concerns about the development’s compliance with the [National Historic] Preservation Act. Nor did the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the agency tasked with enforcing state and federal preservation laws, make any effort to step in and protect the site. . . . The Army Corps and the Department of Historic Resources facilitated the cemetery’s legal erasure."

David Moseley and other family members, "still own the eastern 83 acres of the property," Smith writes. "Every so often, David Moseley or another family member gets an offer to buy their remaining land. Sometimes the correspondence is signed by Wayne Carter, the county administrator who oversaw the permitting process for the Microsoft data center. David asked Smith, "If they can find us to buy the land, why couldn’t they find us for the cemetery?”

Fred McGhee, an African American archaeologist, told Smith: “We are among the only developed countries in the world that considers archaeological sites on private property to be private property themselves rather than cultural heritage. Black historic places are some of the first to get maligned.”

It's Black History Month: Educator talks about teaching America's history, all 'the good, the bad, and the ugly'

DeWitt-King Barn in Vernon County, Wisconsin
(Painting by Patsy Alderson)

Would you like teach U.S. history to high school students? Many people would say "No." But veteran teacher Kevin Alderson and his wife Patsy, both rural Wisconsin natives, found a way: "Together, they are lifelong educators, and Kevin’s 30-year tenure teaching middle- and high-school history add to their credentials as stewards for their region’s history," reports Sara June Jo-Sæbo for The Daily Yonder. "Committed to uncovering and safeguarding the racial and ethnic diversity of rural Wisconsin, the Aldersons offer educational community programs to ensure that our inheritance with diverse American experiences isn’t lost."

Jo-Sæbo writes, "I wanted to talk to Kevin about ways he engaged high-school students in the classroom and to get his opinion about how teaching history has changed over the last 40 years. I also wanted to hear about how country schools and school consolidation affected rural students and racial diversity." Here are her questions and his answers:

As a history teacher, what did you observe in the classroom when students learned local history?
While my approach to teaching family and local history didn’t reach every student, for many of them, being able to connect national and world events with their families and local events – and seeing that they (the students) were part of the story – was the best method. It was about making a personal connection to that history.

Much of American history involves colonizing this continent through the use of impoverished Europeans and enslaved Africans. Our history also involves the persecution of Indigenous people. Does teaching about these traumatic experiences harm students? I accept the argument that we may not be responsible for what was done in the past because we weren’t alive then, but we are responsible for learning the truth about what happened. We fail when we don’t admit that this history happened and we fail when we don’t know the truth about what happened.  . . . If you’re truly trying to teach history – difficult history – you have to teach the greatness, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately, the systemic tendency is to teach the great and the good and whitewash, or erase and ignore, the bad and the ugly. And there are a lot of people who have paid a heavy price for being overlooked.

Most people don’t know that Wisconsin has a substantial history of successful Black farmers who were also our earliest American pioneers. Tell me how you were exposed to Wisconsin’s African American history in your own childhood. I was not exposed to Wisconsin’s rural African-American history as a child. . . . Most of the rural Black history I’ve learned has been since I retired from teaching.

Vernon County, Wisconsin (Wikipedia map)

As an adult, what motivated you to help to preserve Wisconsin’s African-American and Indigenous history? This awareness of rural Black history in Wisconsin came to us through our interest in round barns. My wife, Patsy, is an artist who paints structures and landscapes. Of course, here in Vernon County we have the most round barns, as far as I know, in the nation. She began to make paintings of all the round barns that remained. I began researching the barns and, built upon what the Vernon County Historical Society had compiled, discovered the history of Wisconsin’s Black settlements.

Getting into the 1900s, what made it difficult for Wisconsin’s rural Black communities to remain in Southwest Wisconsin? Interestingly enough, a lot of the settlement faded away with the elimination of country schools. Instead of having your own little school and settlement – which were integrated Black, White and Native American – as soon as they were closing those schools as early as the 40’s and 50’s, they bussed those students to towns and any time new folks are brought into an environment – even from the country to the town – it often created an “us and them” situation.

How can educators teach this complicated story of American history? Intentionally or unintentionally, racism is systemic. There’s a conflict right now between recognizing the truth [of our American history with racism] and suppressing the truth. And how does an individual, or society, or nation move forward into something better if you don’t recognize the mistakes that have been made? Especially if you continue to perpetuate those mistakes. . . .We don’t have to attack our ancestors because it was a different day and a different age…. There are certain things in our history that were evil. Period. But there’s [also] a force of survival: looking for land and looking out for their families.

As a descendant of European settlers, why is it important to you to preserve the history of Black Americans who settled your home state of Wisconsin? Because the complete truth matters. I want to know the complete truth of all facets of American history. And, in fact, it goes beyond preservation. Most people are probably unaware of Black American settlement in Wisconsin during pioneer days. . . . History cannot be preserved if people don’t know it in the first place.

Opinion: Rural America is listening for leadership to support its economic and social renewal, but hears mostly silence

America needs a coherent rural policy, writes Tony Pipa, a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution, leader of the Reimagining Rural Policy Initiative and host of its Reimagining Rural podcast.

"Despite widespread acknowledgment since 2008 that rural places have generally been left behind, our nation still lacks a coherent federal rural policy," Pipa writes for The New York Times. "The Rural Electrification Act, Title V of the Housing Act and other national-scale development programs helped bring rural America into the modern era, and its contributions helped make the American economy the envy of the world. But today’s federal programs were built for a different era. We need a renaissance of rural policy to enable a renaissance of rural America.

"What we have are lots of programs — over 400 available for community and economic development spread across every nook and cranny of the federal government. But navigating that maze and the peculiarities of their applications, reporting and matching requirements is a high bar for anybody, let alone the part-time volunteer elected officials and the bare-bones staffs that make up many local rural governments. That leaves most rural communities starved for investment. Very few can get the type and level of resources necessary to reinvent their economy or unleash the full potential of their human, intellectual and natural capital as they face rapid change."

Agricultural policy is often mistaken for rural policy, Pipa writes: "Farming now accounts for just 7 percent of rural employment. Service jobs, retailing, manufacturing and government employment all outweigh agriculture." And contrary to prevailing belief, rural America is ethnically and racially diverse: "People of color make up 24 percent of the rural population. Close to half of rural Native Americans and more than half of rural Black Americans live in a distressed county. That’s compared with 18 percent of rural white residents." The image of rural America as an overwhelmingly white place may have cooled some Democrats' interest in it, but elements of the Biden administration remain interested.

"While the Biden administration has started the Rural Partners Network to embed federal staff members in rural communities to help them identify and secure federal resources, the program is limited to select communities in just 10 states and Puerto Rico," Pipa notes. "The country needs a national rural prosperity strategy that offers a coherent vision for rural America in the 21st century. Someone at the highest levels of the White House should be responsible for its execution and cutting through the bureaucratic entanglements. Canada and Ireland, among other countries, have completed such policies and created cabinet-level positions to carry them out. Governors in Wisconsin and Michigan have created rural prosperity offices."

What about Congress? "Rural policy is one issue where Republicans and Democrats should be able to find common ground to work together," on such things as the new Farm Bill, Pipa writes. "Yet early indications signal high-profile fights over food stamps, agricultural subsidies and conservation investments — and limited attention to rural development. . . . Rural America is listening for how public leadership and resources can better support the economic and social renewal of rural communities, but it hears mostly silence."

'Adam is with us.' A genealogist finds DNA from first man

William Noel has DNA that links back to the first
man. (Photo by Tristan Lorei, The Free Lance-Star)

According to Wikipedia, "a haplogroup (haploid from the Greek: ἁπλοῦς, haploûs, 'onefold, simple' and English: group) is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a single-nucleotide polymorphism mutation."

Very science-ish. Also, very exciting for participants in Virginia genealogist Paula Royster's research, which was "conducted into the origins of some of Fredericksburg’s oldest Black families—and for William Noel [a study participant] in particular," reports Adele Uphaus of The Free Lance-Star. 

Uphaus shares Royster's research announcement: “Mr. Noel, you are the only person living in these United States with this particular DNA type. You have the same haplogroup as the first human man. Adam is with us today.” 

Noel's DNA results "were so exciting that they kept her awake at night," Royster told Uphaus. Royster is a scholar of the African diaspora and founder of the Center for African American Genealogical Research, a nonprofit whose mission is to reunite African-descended Americans with their distant African relatives.

Mr. Noel's "DNA is part of a group known as A000, which predates modern humans and has as its common ancestor the man from whom all other human men are descended—a person genealogists call 'Y-line Adam,'" Uphaus writes. Royster explained to the group: "That type of DNA is extremely rare outside of Africa and was not even known to exist until 2012, when it was discovered in a South Carolina man. [Mr. Noel's] DNA is 40,000 years older than his. . . . We all have these ideas about who came first. You, Mr. Noel, represent the beginning of all creation.”

According to Uphaus, Royce referred to the slave auction block that stood at the intersection of William and Charles streets in Fredericksburg before it was moved to the Fredericksburg Area Museum, saying “You can see that our history didn’t begin with that 1,000-pound block on the corner."

USDA funds 71 climate-related projects at less than $5 million, many of them to 'figure out what works,' Vilsack says

The Department of Agriculture has funded 71 more five-year "projects to develop climate-smart commodities and a money-making market for them," reports Chuck Abbott of Successful Farming. The $325 million is the second round of funding in its Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, which now totals 141 projects and $3.1 billion, a USDA press release said.

The latest round of grants were for less than $5 million each, to focus on "small and under-served producers and work by minority-serving institutions to measure, monitor, report, and verify the results of climate-smart practices," Abbott reports. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, "We believe that this program will allow us to figure out what works and, frankly, what doesn't work. . . . There are some amazing projects here." For a list of the first- and second-round projects, click here.

"Republicans in Congress say the White House exceeded its authority in creating such a large program on its own, and some critics in the scientific community say more detail is needed to judge the value of the projects," Abbott notes. Republicans don't like that the money comes from "a $30 billion reserve at USDA that also pays for crop subsidies," the Commodity Credit Corp. "Vilsack tripled the size of the program in September after USDA was deluged with proposals, all of which promised private-sector funding."

The 71 projects include agroforestry in New York, hemp in Tennessee, organic eggs in Ohio and Kentucky, specialty crops in California, cattle in Virginia and West Virginia, removing nuisance seaweed from Puget Sound for use as fertilizer, and cover crops for orchards in and near food deserts. There is also "a test of buffalo to mitigate global warming and to market buffalo meat as a climate-smart food," involving 79 tribes and 20,000 head of bison, Abbott reports. "They are the original climate regulator," said Troy Heinert of the InterTribal Buffalo Council. The grant's "funding ceiling," USDA says, is $4,950,000.

Vilsack announced the grants at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which will get a grant with a funding ceiling of $4,999,999 "to support small-scale and other under-served producers . . . transform their traditional production into a multi-pronged agroforestry-based climate-smart, sustainable production system," USDA says. Identical amounts were allocated to the University of Illinois, which will work with Tuskegee and other partners "to scale up robotic cover crop planting and verification of soil carbon" in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Iowa; University of Maryland Eastern Shore to "promote climate-smart cover crops as a feedstock" for anaerobic digesters that process chicken litter; Foodshed Inc. and other partners for "incentives to small and socially disadvantaged specialty crop farmers in San Diego County" in California; the University of Guam "to market climate-smart commodities and achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions in Pacific Island agriculture and forestry systems while improving affordable food and nutrition security of disadvantaged, at-risk, island communities;" and Whitaker Grain "to provide a market platform for rice growers producing premium rice that is certified sustainably grown" in Arkansas.

Getting an allocation of $2 less than those, The Nature Conservancy is in line for $4,999,997 to "grow a set of climate-adapted tree species resilient to the projected climate futures of Minnesota’s Midwest Broadleaf Forest." Other grants near the limit: $4,999,900 to the Coalition for Food Security "to implement climate-smart practices related to indoor hydroponic vertical farming;" the same amount to Regeneration International; the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance to support poultry producers who follow diversified regenerative climate-smart grain production methods" in the Midwest; the same to Working Landscapes and other North Carolina partners to promote climate-smart practices "among small and underserved producers, including tribal producers, principally by equipping food hubs to finance and advise on-farm climate-smart practice implementation and marketing to wholesale and direct-to-consumer channels;" $4,999,800 to Chico State University to launch a "food hub for climate-smart agriculture" in the northern Sacramento River valley; and the same to Western Landowners Alliance "to empower New Mexico Latino and under-served beef and pork producers and their trusted partners to collectively develop, implement, monitor, quantify and broker climate-smart livestock projects."

As Democrats turn away from Iowa, some in party see ways to get more rural votes: show up, be humble, value work

Chart shows examples of Third Way analysis that found "most Democratic candidates improved on President Biden's 2020 performance in rural America — with some notable exceptions," such as Black nominees, Josh Kraushaar of Axios reports.

One step forward, two steps back, rural Democrats might say. The midterm elections showed that Democrats can still win elections with rural votes if they show up and ask for them, but the party's plan to end the Iowa caucuses' first place in the presidential nomination process "is not a great way to mend fences in rural America, where the Democratic brand has become virtually unmarketable," Storm Lake Times Pilot Editor Art Cullen writes in The New York Times, essentially rewriting a column that appeared in his weekly.

Art Cullen

For the locals, Cullen accepts some of the Democrats' rationale, but not "two frauds cooked up to put the caucuses to rest," one that the state party "messed up reporting results" in 2020. In both columns, he blames that on a cellphone app suggested by national Democrats, who rejected Iowa Democrats' plan.

For the national audience, Cullen seems to accept that "We are too white. . . . But diversity did have a chance here. Barack Obama was vaulted to the White House" in 2008 by a strong showing in rural caucuses, with the help of rural newspapers. "Iowa had no problem giving a gay man, Pete Buttigieg, and a Jewish democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, the two top tickets out to New Hampshire last cycle."

Caucuses have virtues: "Candidates were forced to meet actual voters in village diners across the state. We took our vetting role seriously; you had better be ready to analyze Social Security’s actuarial prospects. . . . We did a decent, if imperfect, job of winnowing the field. Along with New Hampshire, we set things up so South Carolina could often become definitive, which it will be no longer." Cullen says "It's OK that South Carolina goes first," because having the first presidential voting hasn't paid off for Iowa: "Nothing really happened to stop the long decline as the state’s Main Streets withered, farmers disappeared and the undocumented dwell in the shadows."

Another view: Froma Harrop, whose column appears in some rural papers, says the change will be more democratic because most South Carolina Democrats are Black, and Black voters haven't had a big voice in the nomination process; and because the caucus process "favors activists who are not deterred by snow, cold or the dark and have the luxury of free evening hours. These folks are skilled in working the intricacies of the caucus process and often aggressive. Not favored are Democrats who work nights at Walmart, drive an Uber after hours and have little children to care for."

In a piece for The Hill, William S. Becker sees "signs that Democrats can build a more substantial base in rural America before 2024. All they have to do is think differently, talk differently and act differently." he cites a report from the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, "a group of experts brought together in 2021 by Appalachian farmer and author Anthony Flaccavento and several colleagues." They point out that "more than 40 percent of voters are rural in many battleground states," Becker writes. "Since 2006, their partisan allegiances have depended on which party pays more attention to them. Winning as little as 2 to 3 percent of their votes can change election outcomes."

Becker adds, "RUBI interviewed 50 rural candidates and researched recent studies on what makes candidates successful in rural areas. It distilled the results into 11 recommendations that seem more about respect and common courtesy than political strategy. They include listening more and talking less; respecting the local people’s knowledge and history; being humble and mission-driven rather than ego-driven; focusing on problem-solving; emphasizing involvement in local activities; treating voters of color as individuals rather than voting blocs, as well as not pandering to racism or gratuitously antagonizing white voters."

Becker also cites a piece in The American Prospect, in which Robert Kuttner writes, “Just showing up turns out to be hugely important, as a sign of respect and commitment;” and a post from Bryce Oates and farmer Jake Davis in The Pulse, a nonpartisan blog focused on North Carolina: “If Democrats truly want to increase their competitiveness in rural America, they should start now by putting working people at the center of their narrative while supporting bold, popular policies that would allow those people to live a good life.”

UPDATE: On NBC's "Meet the Press," Sen. Jon Tester said Democrats should focus their messaging “more on the things we’re doing for rural America,” such as infrastructure. The Montana Democrat "pointed to bills he’s working on that deal with big packers and meat consolidation, which he said would help cow and calf operators make a better living."

Stories from three states show higher risk of pregnancy and childbirth in rural areas, as abortion laws pose complications

Pregnancy-related mortality per 100,000 live births
(Daily Yonder graph, adapted by The Rural Blog)

"Rural women are twice as likely to die from pregnancy complications than women in large metropolitan areas, federal data shows," Sarah Melotte reports for The Daily Yonder. The lack of pregnancy and childbirth care in rural hospitals, especially for high-risk cases, contributes to the problem. And rural women of color and their babies face even worse odds. Stories out of Montana, Nebraska and Texas illustrate the overall trend, made more worrisome fears that that eroding abortion rights will increase the number of high-risk pregnancies. Montana State University sociologist Maggie Thorsen told Melotte that the U.S. is already "the only industrialized country in the world that has a growing maternal mortality rate."

Fewer than half of the nation's rural counties had obstetric services in 2019, a Commonwealth Fund study found. Many hospitals have shuttered them (a trend the pandemic has accelerated), citing expense, lack of personnel, and declining rural birthrates. "Women unable to reach obstetrics units in time to give birth can end up delivering in an emergency room en route to the desired hospital. This can have deadly consequences for individuals with high-risk pregnancies," Melotte reports. "Common complications associated with these births include hemorrhaging, preterm birth, and preeclampsia."

A recent study of Montana maternity deserts illustrates the trend. Thorsen and others found that pregnant Montanans drove an average of 42 minutes from home to give birth, but that trips of several hours were not unusual. About 44% of the state's population lives in rural areas, more than twice the national average, Melotte reports. About half of its counties are maternity-care deserts, and 10% of the state's population—some 93,000 people—live in those deserts.

Native American women in Montana have even higher rates of complications or death in childbirth. Indigenous women (who tend to live in rural areas) are less likely to live within an hour's drive of high-level obstetric services than white women; not many Indian Health Services hospitals in the state provide such services, Thorsen told Melotte.

A story from Nebraska highlights other facets of the issue. Emergency help can be hard to access in rural areas. One rural woman who had preeclampsia called an ambulance, but it took so long to get there that she ended up giving birth in the ambulance, assisted by an EMT who had never delivered a baby, Addie Costello reports for the Flatwater Free Press. Local primary-care physicians can provide some obstetric services, but many are retiring and not enough doctors are replacing them.

Many rural hospitals can't afford to maintain obstetric units since rural births are more likely to be covered by Medicaid than by private insurance. Nebraska Medicaid reimburses at half the private rate, Costello reports. The story also emphasizes health disparities for women of color and their babies.

In Texas, which leads the nation in maternity-ward closures, a recent story presents one of the more extreme examples of a maternity desert: Big Bend Regional Medical Center is the only hospital in 12,000 square miles. It has an obstetric unit, but for more than a year that unit "has closed routinely, sometimes with little notice. Some months it’s been open only three days a week," Claire Suddath reports for Bloomberg. "Big Bend doesn’t really have a choice. In the past two years, almost all its labor and delivery nurses quit. The hospital has tried to replace them, but the national nursing shortage caused by the pandemic has made that impossible. When Big Bend is too short-staffed to deliver a baby safely, its labor and delivery unit has to close."

The staffing shortages also extend to Big Bend's ambulances; the county has two, but only enough EMTs to run one. And when the hospital can't deliver babies, the ambulance must drive a patient to the nearest hospital that can. That means the area's only ambulance is out of pocket for at least five hours.

Quick hits: Gardening through a drought; Delta farmworkers claim discrimination; just how rural is your place?

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Baby formula is coming back, but it's still harder to find in rural areas than cities. Read more here.

Here are tips for keeping your garden going during a drought. Read more here.

Demand for electric and hybrid-electric vehicles is growing faster in rural America than in metro areas (perhaps because there was more ground to make up). Ford is hoping its fully electric F-150 Lightning, comparably priced with its gasoline-powered cousin, will win over rural audiences. Read more here.

An investigation found that some farms in the Mississippi Delta paid their primarily Black local farmers less per hour than foreign workers with H-2A visas, who were most often white men from South Africa. Some Black farmworkers have filed suit, alleging racial discrimination. Read more here.

Determining just how rural a place is can be complicated, since federal agencies use different, often conflicting, definitions based on various criteria. The Rural Health Information Hub has an interesting interactive widget that allows you to see whether where you live is considered rural and by which federal standards. Read more here.

Farmers' markets have been around for a few millennia, and they continue to play an important role in communities today. Read more here.

Rural residents, especially in South, likelier to have medical debt; most Americans have had some in the last five years

More than 100 million Americans, representing 41% of adults in the nation, have medical debt, and they are more likely to live in rural areas, according to a new data analysis by the Urban Institute. The issue is a "critical challenge to Americans’ financial stability and well-being," says the report, since "people with medical debt are likely to forgo needed medical care, have difficulty meeting other basic needs, and face an increased risk of bankruptcy."

A Kaiser Health News and NPR investigation found that the problem of medical debt is "far more pervasive than previously reported," Noam Levey reports, "because much of the debt that patients accrue is hidden as credit-card balances, loans from family, or payment plans to hospitals and other medical providers." According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll that informed the reporters' investigation, more than half of U.S. adults said they've gone into debt in the past five years because of medical or dental bills. About one in four with medical debt owe more than $5,000 and about one in five said they'll probably never pay it off.

Medical debt "is forcing families to cut spending on food and other essentials. Millions are being driven from their homes or into bankruptcy, the poll found," Levey reports. The issue is also deepening racial disparities, and is preventing many from saving for retirement, buying a home, affording college, and more. It's also making life harder for people already facing cancer and other chronic illnesses. 

The Urban Institute analysis found that people with medical debt in collections are more likely to live in the South; of the 100 counties with the highest levels of medical debt, 79 are in states that didn't expand Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. One-off medical emergencies aren't driving medical debt: The prevalence of chronic medical conditions among a county's residents was the strongest predictor of medical debt. Counties with higher shares of uninsured, low-income, younger, or Black or Hispanic residents also have higher rates of medical debt. 

The No Surprises Act, which took effect Jan. 1, aims to protect patients from out-of-network medical bills, but it has some limitations; ground ambulances, for example, can cost thousands of dollars but are not covered under the bill. About half of emergency ground ambulance rides result in out-of-network charges for people with private insurance, according to a recent KFF study.

Quick hits: USFS needs firefighters; 'forever chemicals' may damage your liver; podcast talks rural Black health

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

A new podcast, "Black in Red," discusses Black health in rural America. Read more here.

Hazardous "forever chemicals" found in a wide range of everyday products could damage your liver, a new study has found. Read more here.

"The rise of fracking in Appalachia has fed visions of turning the Ohio River valley into a petrochemical and plastics hub. But overproduction of plastic, opposition to natural gas pipelines, and public concern about rampant plastic waste are upending those plans," Beth Gardiner reports for Yale Environment 360. Read more here.

The U.S. Forest Service is scrambling to hire enough firefighters before this summer's wildfire season. Read more here.

Quick hits: Sterile super-Romeo trout may help curb invasive species; tools for rural electric co-ops transitioning to renewable energy; federal aid fuels pickleball boom

Brook trout have been outcompeting native trout for years.
(NPL photo by Nick Hawkins)

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

People of color and low-income communities are at a disproportionate risk of being harmed by pesticide exposure, according to a newly released study. Read more here.

A non-profit has a page full of tools and guidelines to help rural electric cooperatives transition to renewable energy. Read more here.

To save an underdog fish species out West, scientists are turning some invasive trout into sterile super-Romeos and setting them loose. Since they're taking the bulk of female trout's attention during mating season, that helps reduce births among the species. Read more here.

Federal Covid-19 aid is funding a pickleball court construction boom. Read more here.

Tick bites are causing an increasing number of people to become allergic to meat. Read more here.

Quick hits: Texas town split by murder charges in alleged abortion; why food prices are up and farmer profits aren't

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Montana ranchers live right next to a nuclear missile silo—a thought that has been much on their minds during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Washington Post talks with them about what that's like. Read more here.

Texas passed an anti-abortion law last year that empowered citizens to enforce it via lawsuits against abortion providers or those who help them. But recently a woman in a small town was arrested on murder charges for an alleged abortion (though she was soon released and the charges dropped). The controversy split her community. Read more here.

In a recent video, the Michigan Farm Bureau discussed why food prices have been increasing but not farmer profits. Watch the video here.

It's not just chickens and turkeys that are dying from the bird flu pandemic. Bald eagles in 14 states have died too. Read more here.

Just in time for Earth Day, here's a list of America's most endangered rivers. Read more here.

Decades after a Ukrainian teen spent a year in rural Kentucky as a foreign exchange student, the same small town welcomed her back again, this time as a refugee along with her children. Read more here.

Rural Texans who met Vladimir Putin in 2001 reflect on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Read more here.

The University of Kentucky has received a $1.5 million gift from an African American who grew up on his family's farm in the Bluegrass region, meant to encourage Black and other underrepresented students to pursue farming and other natural resources careers. Read more here.

Georgia has the latest "Freedom to Farm" bill, meant to protect farmers from nuisance lawsuits filed by neighbors. Read more here.

Ex-census overseer: Skewed 2020 census meant 6 states wrongly lost a House seat, 6 more rural states gained one

The 2020 census was underfunded, understaffed, and cut short. This apparently affected some rural areas, but widespread undercounts of Blacks and Hispanics and overcounts of whites and Asians caused a malapportionment of U.S. House seats that benefited more rural states, Robert Shapiro writes for The Washington Monthly. Shapiro oversaw the 2000 census as President Clinton's commerce undersecretary for economic affairs, and chairs the economic policy think tank Sonecon.

"The large-scale errors in the census cost New York, Texas, Florida, Arizona, California, and New Jersey one seat each, and resulted in an extra representative for Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Montana, Wisconsin, and Indiana," Shapiro writes. "Those wide-ranging errors are matters of public record, because the professionals at the Census Bureau obligingly report the decennial census undercount and overcount rates by race and ethnicity. Compared to 2010, undercounts in 2020 jumped from 2.06 to 3.3 percent for Blacks, from 1.54% to 4.99% for Hispanics, and from 0.15% to 0.91% for Native Americans on reservations and Alaskan Natives. Overcounts also shot up, increasing from 0.83% to 1.64% for whites and from virtually zero to 2.62% for Asians." Shapiro's crew calculated the effect on apportionment by applying the error rates to each state's racial and ethnic makeup.

"The debasement of the 2020 census did not have clear partisan effects. The more diverse states that lost out—states in which Black and Hispanic people account for between 33 percent and 52 percent of the population—include not only blue New York, California, and New Jersey but also red Texas and Florida and purple Arizona," Shapiro writes. "Similarly, the unwitting winners include not only red Montana and Indiana but also blue Minnesota and Oregon and purple Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—all states with populations that are 80 to 87 percent white and Asian."

Shapiro says the Trump administration didn't skew the census by overtly manipulating the results but by simply making it easier for serious errors to occur.