The perseverance of Opal Lee: The 'grandmother' of Juneteenth shares a lesson for today

At 98 years old, Opal Lee is still spreading a message of 
patience and love. (Photo by Shayan Asgharnia, TX Monthly)

As a child, she went to school and spent her summers working near Texarkana. Her first job was taking care of the slop jars. As an adult, she raised four children, paid for her college education, and became a teacher.

But at age 89, she set a goal. That goal would send her walking and talking to all sorts of people. She even met with U.S. presidents. And in 2021, she became the "grandmother of Juneteenth," reports Hanif Abdurraqib for Texas Monthly. But Opal Lee isn't finished. At 98 years old, she still believes she has work to do.

The story of why Opal Lee decided to make Juneteenth her life's legacy began in Marshall, Texas, when she was 12 years old. Her family bought a house "on East Annie Street in the Historic Southside neighborhood of Fort Worth," Abdurraqib writes. "On the night of June 19, 1939, a white mob gathered, demanding that the family leave. Lee and her brothers took refuge at a friend’s house a few blocks away while her parents fled under cover of darkness. The mob trashed the home and set it on fire."

When Lee watched President Joe Biden sign Juneteenth into a federal holiday, some might say her work was finished. Abdurraqib explains, "She had actually done the thing she’d set out to do. She’d taken an inciting moment of rage and grief and dedicated her life to healing the wound it had created. … But Lee, who has lived through, endured, and fought for so much … has something unique to offer in an era of renewed crisis."

Lee's tenacity and spirit have led her to change many lives, but her advice is simple: Patience. "The road is long, and you travel on it because the alternative is untenable," Abdurraqib writes. "And you do whatever you can along the way, and you hope some people will maybe join you."

Lee's travels brought her home. She lives in a house built on her family's East Annie Street plot. Abdurraqib adds, "On the front door is a purple wreath. In the center of the wreath is a quote from Lee herself: 'If people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love.'" 

Lee's background in Texas meant she was introduced to Juneteenth celebrations early in life. It was part of the region's culture. Once the day became a national holiday, its celebrations and somber remembrances joined together to make the day especially meaningful for black Americans. PBS offers a "beginners guide" for Juneteenth here. 

Opinion: Addressing white rural rage may mean using a broader scope of understanding and asking better questions

The book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman has continued to stir debate. The Rev. Daniel Schultz shares his insights on the book's controversial themes in his opinion for Raw Story. An excerpt of his opinion is shared below. To read his entire opinion, click here.

To begin with, the book faces two primary objections. "First, Schaller and Waldman may have misrepresented or misunderstood scholarship on the rural context. Second, their thesis — that white rural voters pose a unique threat to American democracy — may be overstated and undersupported.

"I've known of Schaller and Waldman's work for a long time and know Tom himself at least a little. So, I was surprised to see the vehemence and breadth of the pushback on the new book. I was equally surprised to see other folks I know strongly defend their thesis. The authors got their own word in at The New Republic."

Natilyn Photography image, Unsplash

It's time to consider that rural voters may be voting for race. "While I was groping around for what I did want to say, Noah Berlatsky ... just went ahead and nailed it: 'Democrats struggle not with rural voters in general, but with white rural voters in particular. And white rural voters do not vote for the GOP because they are rural. They vote for the GOP because they are white.'

"That's pretty much it. As one scholar argues, if you control for other factors, the difference between rural and urban voting patterns essentially disappears. Race is a much stronger predictor than things like income, religion or place of residence."

Social life and an unwillingness to 'rock the boat' motivate rural voters. "There is one factor particular to rural areas that deserves consideration before we look at potential answers to the 'rural problem.' Rural folks traditionally don't move around as much as city folks. Deep roots feed social capital through rich networks of relations, neighbors and friends. . . . But those same roots provide lots of incentives not to rock the social boat."

"There's a need to start asking better questions. "I don't say these things to valorize or demonize rural areas. It's just that knowing them helps us to ask the right questions. . . . The usual hot take is that they've been hoodwinked by Republicans into voting on culture rather than cold hard cash. But that doesn't give them much credit. They're not fools." 

"Democrats and progressives will need to do a lot less writing off rural districts as hopeless and a lot more intentional work on developing solidarity with them. . . . It would help if there were a leftwing media ecosystem to push the good news coming out of those developments."

Many rural counties are poorly equipped to deal with rising gun homicides; some of the worst rates are in the South

From 2016 to 2020, Phillips County had the country’s highest per capita
rate of gun homicides. (Photo by Renuka Rayasam, KFF Health News)

Homicides involving guns are often considered an urban problem, but rural America has its own firearm traumas that few communities have the resources to address effectively. "Nationwide, rural gun homicides have risen, and, in some areas, outpaced their urban counterparts. From 2016 to 2020, 13 of the 20 counties with the highest gun homicide rates were in the rural South, according to the Center for American Progress, a policy research institute, reports Renuka Rayasam for The Daily Yonder.

Elaine, Arkansas, pop. 500, is a dramatic example, "Phillips County, where Elaine is located, is home to about 15,000 people spread across 690 square miles. Data shows they're at high risk of gun violence. From 2016 to 2020, the Phillips County had the country's highest per capita rate of gun homicides, according to an analysis last year by the CAP," Rayasam writes. "During three days in July, police responded to reports of four homicides in Helena-West Helena, the Phillips County seat. That might be a small number for a major city, but it has an outsize impact in a rural town," said Nick Wilson, senior director for gun violence prevention at the Center for American Progress. The sheer number of deaths can devastate communities that often lack resources to stem gun violence or mental health services to help traumatized residents. Also, the nearest medical centers to treat victims are often miles away.

Segregated communities, racism and poverty add to social tensions that can lead to violent outcomes. Phillips County has "a harrowing history of racism," Rayasam reports. "In 1919, Elaine was the site of one of the worst racial massacres in U.S. history. At least 200 Black residents were murdered by white residents and soldiers over a couple of days after a group of Black farmers met one late September evening to demand better payments for their cotton crops." Daniel Webster, a distinguished scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, told Rayasam: "These disadvantages are structural and driven by policy rather than naturally occurring. The conditions that lead to structural racism also lead to higher rates of gun violence. . . . These places have lacked investment, where poverty is rampant, unemployment is high, schools are failing, and buildings are crumbling."

"Under those conditions, even small stressors, like a fight over a cigarette, can lead to a shooting, researchers say. Most homicides in Phillips County, as in urban areas, stem from interpersonal or domestic disputes," Rayasam adds. "A few years ago, a man in Helena shot a man who allegedly stole butter beans from his garden."

Hicks Gilbert, who became Elaine's first Black and female mayor, is working on changing "'the mindset of what is possible,'" Rayasam reports. "She is requiring public housing operators to keep properties up to code, bringing in dumpsters to encourage residents to clean up trash, tearing down dilapidated houses, hiring young people to work in city government and at the community center, and starting a tutoring program." But progress can be slow and "persistent poverty and violence take an emotional toll, said Steven Cannon, a pastor who also runs an after-school community center in West Helena." Cannon told Rayasam, "What you see can be depressing at times, especially on a young generation."

She taught about race, was made to stop and now wonders how she will continue to teach with trust and 'authenticity'

Mary Wood's students reported her for a lesson on racism.
(Photo by Will Crooks, The Washington Post)

Seeking to have her all-white class understand more about racial history and identities, teacher Mary Wood of Chapin, South Carolina, had her students read a book "that dissects what it means to be Black in America. . . . Her students reported her for "[making] them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students' feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress' on account of their race," reports Hannah Natanson for The Washington Post.

The book was Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, which Wood paired with educational videos. Natanson writes, "Reading Coates' book felt like 'reading hate propaganda towards white people,' one student wrote. . . . At least two parents complained. . . . Within days, school administrators ordered Wood to stop teaching the lesson. They placed a formal letter of reprimand in her file. It instructed her to keep teaching 'without discussing this issue with your students.'" Wood completed the semester "feeling defeated and betrayed — not only by her students but also by the school system that raised her. The high school Wood teaches at is the same one she attended."

Chapin is about 25 miles northwest
of Columbia, S.C.  (Wikipedia map)

A local newspaper reported Wood's censure, and the conflict spread. "At school board meetings and online Facebook groups, the citizens of wealthy, White and conservative Chapin debated whether Wood should be fired," Natanson reports. "Republican state representatives showed up to a June meeting to blast her as a lawbreaker. The next month, a county NAACP leader declared her an 'advocate for the education of all students.'"

South Carolina is one of 18 states "to restrict education on race since 2021, according to an Education Week tally. And at least half the country has passed laws that limit instruction on race, history, sex or gender identity, per a Washington Post analysis. Wood is not the first teacher to get caught in the crossfire: The Post previously reported that at least 160 educators have lost their positions since the pandemic due to political debates," Natanson adds.

Wood now wonders if she can trust her students and the system that told her to teach an authentic curriculum that helps young adults enter a challenging world. "And for Wood, teaching authentically means assigning writers like Coates—voices unfamiliar, even disconcerting, to students in her lakeside town," Natanson writes. "Because of what happened last year, though, Wood now worried anything, from the most provocative essay to the least interesting comment about her weekend, might be resisted, recorded and reported by the children she's supposed to teach."

Opinion: When we listen carefully, the divisions of rural and urban fall away and a different picture emerges

The Daily Yonder graphic

by Nora R. Moosnick
The Daily Yonder

America is again segregated. Spaces where opponents divided by supposed geographic and political differences interact are increasingly rare. Since the 2016 election, the media’s infatuation with rifts between rural and urban voters has been ensconced into our cultural design. These developments overlook the promise of places such as university campuses to blur and overcome fissures. 

I have long been consumed with political and social divisions, but since 2016 my focus has centered on the rural/urban alignment in particular. From 2015-18 I was the faculty director of a University of Kentucky social justice living and learning community, in which students interested in social-justice issues voluntarily live together and explore topics as a group.  After the presidential election of 2016, racial hate speech occurred on our dorm floor. African American students accused White, rural Kentucky students, also in the learning community, of being responsible. 

Immediately afterwards, the residence life department of the university organized a session to address the situation, which quickly turned tense. Black students sat on one side of the room, and White rural kids sat on the floor. Students said things normally unspoken. A student from Chicago talked about family members who advised her against attending Kentucky, fearing for her safety, and women recalled being barred from white fraternity parties. The White rural students looked shell-shocked and unfamiliar with what they were hearing, because they came from communities with few minorities. 

In the years that followed, I committed to overcoming the rural/urban divide through oral histories. That goal eventually led me and 12 student interns to chronicle the lives of undergraduate students at the University of Kentucky, West Virginia University, University of Florida, and University of Mississippi. The themes of the work mirrored the lives of the student interns, who were Black, Brown, White and from rural, urban, and suburban communities.

Not until delving into the students’ stories did I realize that the rural/urban divide is too simplistic to apply to real lives. The students’ stories exposed complicated geographic identities, undermining myths that rural spaces are white, and revealing unexpected class similarities.

I had organized the oral history work around the rural/urban divide, but it became apparent that this was a flawed structure. Students’ geographic identities were not easily pigeonholed. “Can I interview them, they’re from Chicago but moved to small town Kentucky?” Student interviewers’ endless questions about whether an interviewee qualified as rural or urban revealed that the dichotomy was fraught. Students occupied multi-sided identities. Students also came from communities with garbled geographic delineations. It was clear, for instance, that the idea that urban spaces are Black ones ignores geographic realities.

Examples from the work include University of Florida student, “Alex,” who in the space of his interview addressed the complicated racial/geographic dynamics in his northern Florida community. Rural whites live in the city, while minorities are relegated to rural parts. 

… a lot of white rural people living in the city limits but when you go outside the city limits, that’s where the minorities live where we’re barred from voting for the mayor and we’re kind of considered this rural area outside the city limits… It’s kind of a way to keep us from voting.

His identity was rural/urban.

I consider myself rural/urban type because my city is different. If you stay close to the city, you’re still kind of in the urban area, go north and it’s actually one of the most racist cities in the state of Florida, a lot of KKK members. Black folks, we know not to go up to that area because it’s dangerous...

Geographic trickiness overlaid with racism informed his identity. 

Associating white students with rural parts and Black students with urban locations is inaccurate, especially in Mississippi. Rural students from the Delta mentioned never having been around Whites until they attended the University of Mississippi.  Meanwhile, some Black and Brown students from rural and urban communities showed no hint of geographic discord between them.

The interviews also exposed the significance of class in the face of geographic and even racial and cultural differences. When a student comes from a community defined by poverty, whether in Appalachia or Chicago, they encounter a campus that historically has not been oriented toward them. Flagships campuses, in particular, are status rich landscapes exuding wealth, accomplishment, and prominent sports teams, more familiar and comfortable to students who occupy middle class or better status. Multiple times we heard students say something like, “You have to have money to go here.” Students from struggling communities question whether they belong and may hide their class-based struggles, including food insecurity. There is shame in not being able to do things that other students take for granted like affording a meal out. That is despite the fact that these students, rural or urban, may come from communities where they represent the few who make it to the flagship campus.

Campus culture is not theirs also because they often come from communities familiar with trauma. Traumatic stories infused the interviews. A student from the Delta regularly ran home to speak at the funerals of her high school classmates, and an Eastern Kentucky student raced home for a multi-person funeral. These students, urban or rural, conceal their trauma on flagship campuses: Coming from trauma is not considered the lifeworld of a “normal” college student. 

College campuses offer possibilities. Living close to each other, opportunities exist for students to have honest conversations and to see likenesses hidden in complicated identities and class realities. What we learned is that geographic spaces are not easily delineated, that suburbia slides into both rural and urban locations, and that poverty exists in suburbia as it does in dense cities and remote counties. Poor students face parallel struggles with campus culture regardless of their backgrounds and crave spaces to unmask themselves. 

But the possibility of students seeing their likenesses usually goes unrealized. Nonetheless, flagships campuses, where students from a wide range of backgrounds meet, are unique settings to counter the segregation that is crippling America. Revealing students’ stories is a starting point for spurring empathy among students who may never imagined their resemblances.

---

Nora (Rosie) Moosnick is a native Kentuckian, sociologist, and author of Campus Candor:  Students’ Stories Unmasked (Cognella 2023)—written in collaboration with three former students, Tori Cruz-Falk, Emily Keaton, and Saturn Star-Shooter. She is also the author of Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky:  Stories of Accommodation and Audacity, (University Press of Kentucky 2012, 2021), and Adopting Maternity:  White Women Who Adopt Transracially and/or Transnationally (Praeger 2004).

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Hotly debated 'Try That in a Small Town' became a roaring success after CMT publicly took the video off its playlist

Jason Aldean performs in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin.
(Photo by Joshua Applegate, Getty Images, via Axios)

If there ever was an example of "all publicity is good publicity," it's Jason Aldean's controversial tune "Try That in a Small Town." The song sits at No. 2 on Billboard's all-genre Hot 100 chart. The heated backlash is the propulsive force behind the song's climb to the top, reports Adam Tamburin of Axios Nashville. "The song depicts an exaggerated urban-rural divide in which cities are dominated by unrest that isn't tolerated in small towns."

The song dropped without drama in May, but when the video aired in mid-July, a maelstrom of criticism hit Country Music Television. CMT publicly yanked the video from its playlist, and the controversy hit the charts. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist who runs the country music tipsheet The Morning Hangover, told Tamburin,"You couldn't ask for a better gift when it comes to promoting a record, especially for that core Jason Aldean audience, than what CMT did."

The song's ubiquity proves Bardella's point. Tamburin writes, "Billboard reports the song sold 228,000 digital singles last week, the largest sales week for a country song in more than a decade. It logged 11.6 million streams, a 547% jump from the week before. . . . The video remains popular on YouTube, where it has logged more than 18 million views since its July 14 release."

Critics claim the video is racist, encourages lynching and promotes gun violence. Factually speaking, "The video features a performance in front of Tennessee's Maury County Courthouse, which was the site of a 1946 race riot and a 1927 lynching," Tamburin reports. "Aldean has defended the song, tweeting that 'there is not a single lyric ... that references race or points to it.' At a concert last week, Aldean said his fans had pushed back against 'cancel culture'. . . . Bardella says the situation mirrors broader political debates over cancel culture, with country fans ultimately feeling defensive and entrenched. A better approach, he says, would be to discuss the context of the video without trying to keep people from seeing it." As of July 25, the Black Lives Matter images in the video were removed.

"Song of the day" picks from the Axios Nashville staff:
Nate's song of the day is "Small Town" by John Mellencamp.
Adam's song of the day is "Small Town Saturday Night" by Hal Ketchum.
Axios southern bureau chief Michael Graff's song of the day is "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" by Pearl Jam.
Copy editor Katie Lewis' song of the day is "Small Town Hypocrite" by Caylee Hammack featuring Chris Stapleton.

'Try that in a Small Town' a missed opportunity, small-towner writes; W. Post writer calls it 'a fantasy of violent retribution'

Jason Aldean in 'Try That in a Small Town' (YouTube)

Either from their lyrics, curious catchiness or infectious beat, some songs and accompanying videos can bring people together. Jason Aldean's latest song 'Try That in a Small Town" isn't that sort of tune, writes Skylar Baker-Jordan in an opinion piece for The Daily Yonder.

"Jason Aldean broke onto the country scene in 2005 with his top 10 hit 'Hicktown.' Subsequent songs, such as 'Amarillo Sky' (about the plight of farmers) and 'Flyover States' (an ode to the heartland) cemented his reputation as a preeminent troubadour for rural America," Bakr-Jordan writes. "So how did his latest offering, 'Try That in a Small Town,' get it so wrong?"

The song dropped quietly enough in May. The video followed on July 14. "The backlash was swift and severe, with Country Music Television pulling the video mere days after it debuted. . . . Lyrics like 'cuss out a cop, spit in his face/stomp on the flag and light it up, Yeah, ya think you're tough,' Aldean and the songwriters position big cities as crime-ridden hellholes where people 'Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store.' In a small town, though, you can 'see how far ya make it down the road' because 'round here, we take care of our own.'" (The gun angle is explored here.)

Taking care of neighbors is great, but the lyric implies that rural areas are more kind, Baker-Jordan writes: "By pitting urban versus rural, he is not so much extolling the values he grew up with as he is exacerbating the divide already present in our nation. Rather than acknowledging that crime – which happens in rural communities too – is the problem, he blames cities." (Republican presidential candidates are playing the song at events, NBC News reports.)

The video's major location is "a courthouse where an infamous lynching occurred in 1927," but "the production company behind the video denies this was intentional," Baker-Jordan reports. But it "only adds to the problematic nature of the song," which "excludes people of color. . . . Black people live in small towns. Gay people live in small towns. Progressives live in small towns. They have never been the sole purview of conservative white men like Aldean." UPDATE, July 25: Black Lives Matter images in the video have been removed.

Columnist Paul Waldman of The Washington Post calls the video "a fantasy of violent retribution against outsiders — those who would bring the supposed lawlessness of the city to the small town. . . . Were it not for Aldean’s recent political feuds with other artists and the provocation in the video, the song might have simply been cast on the gigantic pile of country songs about small towns. There might be no theme more ubiquitous in the genre: what makes rural life worthwhile, what people in rural areas enjoy and how they live their lives. Some of this music is earnest — even sentimental — about finding pride and meaning in the place where you come from."

That's the sort of song Baker-Jordan wishes Aldean would write. She calls the song "a missed opportunity. . . . Aldean could have produced an anthem that extolled the values of neighborliness and collectivism, which I would agree our nation needs to return to. . . . [Instead] Aldean recorded an anthem dripping with disdain for half the country and filmed a music video at a site of a racist hate crime. . . . I don’t come away from that song feeling like he cares about me. I come away from it feeling like he’s attacking me. And I’m from a small town, too."

Alabama agrees to provide sewage-disposal systems to a county, in first-of-its-kind settlement agreement with feds

Sewage overflow in Lowndes County (Photo: Dennis Pillion, AL.com)

Do all Americans have a right to sanitation even if they cannot afford the systems needed to do the job? "The federal government now seems to be answering yes to that question, using a civil-rights investigation to press Alabama to solve long-standing sewage infrastructure problems in remote and lightly populated areas," reports Dennis Pillion of AL.com.

The Justice Department alleged that the Alabama Department of Public Health "engaged in a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with raw sewage" in Lowndes County, a rural, majority-Black county of about 10,000 people. Now Alabama "is the first state to reach an interim settlement agreement with federal authorities on environmental-justice grounds," agreeing to provide the county with adequate sewage treatment. The Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."

Lowndes County
(Wikipedia map)

Widespread poverty is one reason Lowndes County has been unable to resolve its sanitation challenges. The second obstacle is its very dense Black Belt soil, which "makes many septic systems inoperable," Pillions notes. "Addressing the wastewater needs of each residence in Lowndes County will likely require treatment systems of all different shapes, sizes and technologies [and many millions of dollars, but just how much is still a huge question. . . . Much of the cost will come from federal funds. The agreement stipulates that ADPH should seek funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and other federal grants to conduct its analysis and create an action plan to solve these sewage issues. ADPH will collaborate with the Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies throughout the project."

Many of us never interact with people of another race and don't like interacting with those who don't share their politics

Photo by Anthony Garand, Unsplash

For some Americans, variety is not the spice of life; they'd rather not mingle with anyone they consider different. Instead, they value "sameness, not difference," reports Emma Green of The Atlantic. "Most Americans do not live in a totalizing bubble. They regularly encounter people of different races, ideologies, and religions. For the most part, they view these interactions as positive or at least neutral. Yet according to a new study by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic, a significant minority of Americans do not live this way. They seldom or never meet people of another race. They dislike interacting with people who don't share their political beliefs. And when they imagine the life they want for their children, they prize sameness, not difference."

This seems to be a disproportionately rural phenomenon, based on a poll taken for PRRI and The Atlantic in December. "People living in rural areas were significantly less likely than those in cities to encounter racial, religious, or political difference," Green reports. "And among white people, education level made a huge difference: Those without a college degree were more than twice as likely as their college-educated peers to say they rarely encounter people of a different race, and more than four times as likely to say they seldom or never encounter people from a different religion or political party."

When it comes to politics, "Just under a quarter of Americans say they seldom or never interact with people who don't share their partisan affiliation," Green reports. "Black and Hispanic people were more likely than whites to describe their lives this way, although education made a big difference among whites: 27 percent of non-college-educated whites said they seldom or never encounter people from a different political party, compared with just 6 percent of college-educated whites."

Merriam-Webster defines pluralism as "a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization." In theory, pluralism supports democracy, Green writes: "In a political era when the vast majority of Americans believe the country is divided over issues of race, politics, and religion, [pluralistic] relationships across lines of difference could foster empathy and civility." However, "These survey results suggest that Americans are deeply ambivalent about the role of diversity in their families, friendships, and civic communities. Some people, it seems, prefer to stay in their bubble."

People may opt to stay within their political or social group because of poor past experiences. "Almost one in five of the survey respondents said their interactions with people of a different political party are negative. . . . Party affiliation influences not just how people vote, but cultural decisions such as what to buy or watch on television," Green reports. Lilliana Mason, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, told Green, "As these other social identities have moved into alignment with partisanship, we're seeing more animosity across partisan lines—not necessarily because we're disagreeing about things, but because we believe the [person from the] other party is an outsider, socially and culturally, from us."

Multiculturalism is a point of vast political divides. "In the survey, 54 percent of Democrats said they prefer the United States to be made up of people from a wide variety of religions, compared with 12 percent of Republicans. By contrast, 40 percent of Republicans said they'd prefer a nation mostly made up of Christians, compared with 14 percent of Democrats," Green writes.

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.

Teacher shortage leaves many rural and minority students without teachers, as administrators struggle to fill positions

Teacher shortages leave students learning via software or on their
own in Rosedale, Miss. (Photo by Rory Doyle, The Washington Post)

To raise educated citizens, the U.S. needs good teachers, but from state to state, the system is falling short with rural and minority students, and "rural and Southern states face a crisis," reports The Washington Post.

"The nature and the severity of the teacher crisis differ radically from state to state, district to district and even school to school," Moriah Balingit writes. "Some districts have only recently started experiencing teacher shortages, but in many Southern states, the problem has been long-standing and only gotten worse. . . . In rural Mississippi, the geometry teacher is a recording. The chemistry students often teach themselves."

Balingit uses West Bolivar High School in Mississippi as an example: "The school is 98 percent Black, and 100 percent of children qualify for free or reduced-price meals," and keeping the school staffed is a "high-wire balancing act that relies on long-term substitutes, virtual classes and hiring educators to teach subjects they have no training in. Before Supt. Will Smith arrived, the district had hired so many uncertified educators that it risked losing accreditation." Will Smith asked Balingit, “It’s not fair, but what else do we have?”

Balingit writes: "The importance of teachers cannot be underestimated. Research suggests that they matter more to a child’s learning than any other school-based factor, including the condition of the school building or the principal. Teachers not only affect academic achievement, they can also influence the likelihood a child will graduate from high school and how much they’ll learn over the course of their lives, researchers found. For children whose teachers are underqualified, inexperienced or nonexistent, the stakes are high. . . . Researchers have found that schools that serve high percentages of minority students and students in poverty have more difficulty finding and retaining qualified educators than whiter, more affluent schools."

The national teacher shortage began after the "2008 Great Recession, when the nation’s public education system lost more than 120,000 teachers," Belingit reports. "When the economy rebounded and schools started hiring again, they found that many of those who had left were reluctant to return. There have been other factors, too: The number of people entering teacher training programs dropped by about one-third between 2008 and 2019."

Rosedale, Mississippi (Wikipedia map)

A teacher shortage meant states needed to offer greater salaries; however, "Two years ago, Mississippi came in dead last in average teacher pay, according to a National Education Association report, at a little less than $47,000 a year," Balingit reports. And schools like West Bolivar became "like a lot of communities in the region, the county is rich in culture, history and community pride but economically poor, having lost population when manufacturing jobs left and agriculture became more automated. Those who remain send their children to deteriorating schools that their districts struggle to run because of a dwindling tax base and a state legislature reluctant to fund schools at the per-student rate the law is supposed to guarantee."

For school administrators, teacher recruitment and student achievement are ongoing stressors. Smith told Balingit: “When you get that email, you’re jumping. You have to quickly call the candidate and have a talk before they get hired by somebody else. . . . At the end of the day, you’re still expected to produce the results. None of the excuses are going to matter.”

Quick hits: Remembering the Kings, rural research on a road trip, Appalachian recipes, marvelous maple syrup . . .

The Embrace is more than a memorial. (Photo by Murray Whyte, The Boston Globe)

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King with The Embrace. More that a memorial, the sculpture celebrates the unsung.

The creepiest day on the calendar has returned: Friday the 13th.

January marks the beginning of tax season. Helpful changes to get you started are here. Words of wisdom taken from the "unofficial" IRS website to get you started: A tax loophole is "something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.''  –Russell Long, U.S. senator, Louisiana

A road trip through rural New England is always welcome. Especially when it involves an experiment and several homemade donuts.

Amaryllis, paper whites, or a Christmas cactus, winter slogs on but these gems are still spreading cheer. Notes on how to take care of your holiday plants.

Warm and romantic. In the 1930s, car trips took you to some unexpected places.

The vivid colors and flavors of Appalachian cooking are celebrated in Ronni Lundy’s book Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes.

Maple syrup is more complex than sugar and punches above its weight as go-to ingredient.

Good news: The phrase "it is what it is" has been banished along with nine other skunk phrases that aren't invited to the garden party. Thank you, Michigan.

Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! When a helicopter shows up in rural town, spectators gather. Kind of like when there's a bear headed into the general store.

Several states have passed laws as part of the educational 'culture war;' is it more about education or votes?

Number of laws passed affecting education culture wars
(Washington Post map; click to enlarge; click here for the interactive version.)

Over the past three academic years, half of U.S. state legislatures have passed laws restricting what cultural values can be conveyed through American education, an analysis by Hannah Natanson, Clara Ence Morse, Anu Narayanswamy and Christina Brause of The Washington Post finds. Just over 40% of those laws bar transgender students from sports teams that match their gender identities, while over a one-fourth limit what teachers can say about race, racism and history. 

That suggests that both political parties are "doubling down on the culture war," the Post reports, as both sides use "the education laws to signal their values to voters: While Republicans are proposing and passing the measures, Democrats are loudly opposing them." The paper citing Houman Harouni, a Harvard University lecturer who studies education. "This, to me, reads more like a PR campaign," Harouni said. "On either side, I don’t really think this is about education."

The online education offered during the pandemic allowed many parents to get a closer look at what was being taught in schools and some didn't like what they saw, Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told the Post. Politicians everywhere took note of Republican Glenn Youngkin's rise to Virginia governor on a 2021 campaign promising to give parents more control over lesson plans. 

"So now, there’s a sense among some conservatives that pushing this kind of legislation can actually win over swing voters," Pondiscio said. "A sense that attacking public education is an electoral winner."

Quick hits: Ky. teachers lose licenses mostly due to sexual misconduct; should California rebuild burned towns? . . .

A peer-reviewed report from the Brookings Institution aims to explain why the federal government needs to step up rural broadband efforts.

The top reason Kentucky teachers have lost their licenses over the past five years has been sexual misconduct, a year-long Lexington Herald-Leader investigation found.

Want a career saving the planet? Become an electrician, reports The Washington Post. 

California spends billions rebuilding wildfire-ravaged towns, but should the always be rebuilt? asks the Los Angeles Times.

The racism, and resilience, behind today's salmon crisis, from ProPublica and Oregon Public Broadcasting.

'The biggest social and environmental injustice' in a town of 10,000 is to be eliminated, mainly with federal money

Veterans who live in the neighborhood were on the front row
for Gov. Andy Beshear's announcement of the federal grant.
(Photo by Marcus Dorsey, Lexington Herald-Leader)

In 1965, the year Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and the year after it made Civil Rights Act the law of the land, the City of Paris, Ky. (current population 10,000), built a waste incinerator in the main Black neighborhood of the 13% Black town. The site, which had been a park for Blacks in the days of official segregation. Then it also became the city's transfer station for solid waste, now getting 30 trucks a day at the end of a residential street. Residents have long called the site "the city dump," a term mentioned by the Bourbon County Citizen in its Aug. 11 story about a $2 million federal grant to move the station.

“It’s been the biggest social and environmental injustice in our county,” Bourbon County Judge-Executive Mike Williams said after a press conference Monday to formally announce the grant. Beth Musgrave of the Lexington Herald-Leader paraphrases him: "It’s like so many public-works projects in the 1960s — it was placed in an area that had little political will to fight it." Or political power.

The community development block grant, from federal funds, is contingent on the city coming up with another $2 million by 2024 to finish the project. City Manager Jamie Miller told Musgrave that it might use pandemic relief money.

The sign on the building says "City of Paris Municipal Incinerator." (Lexington Herald-Leader photo by Marcus Dorsey)

Lewis, 'grandmother of Appalachian studies,' dies at 97; paper in her native Ga. county paid tribute before her death

Appalachian historian, sociologist, and women's rights activist Helen M. Lewis died Sunday at age 97 following complications from Covid-19. From her obituary: "Helen spent a lifetime as a radical educator and activist, working for justice from the Deep South to Appalachia and internationally. Helen taught in colleges and prisons; went to jail for civil rights and stood on picket lines; planted gardens and wrote poetry. In all her work she connected, supported, and pushed people to work together and go a little farther to build communities and make change."

Helen Lewis in a coal mine in the 1960s
(Appalachian State University photo)

Lewis often advised organizations such as the Center for Rural Strategies, which publishes The Daily Yonder. The Yonder called Lewis a "towering figure in the fields of Appalachian studies and scholar activism," and noted: "In the late 1960s and early 1970s, while on the faculty of Clinch Valley College in Wise, Va. (now the University of Virginia College at Wise), she pioneered new courses that opened mountain students’ eyes to their history, culture, and pressing social issues like the environmental cost of strip mining. She later joined the Highlander Research and Education Center, where she developed techniques for communities to conduct their own solutions-oriented research on local social and civic issues. Her areas of scholarship and activism included environmental justice, community development, empowerment of women, and community health."

Mike Buffington of the Jackson Herald in Jefferson, Ga., in Lewis's native county, wrote a tribute to her last year, which concluded: "While she lived in Georgia with her sister, she gave a sermon to the small church she attended in Cherry Log. In that sermon, she said the following: 'We don't all have to be protestors, but let us remember those who have confronted pharaohs, governors, county commissioners, corporations and unjust laws. Let us remember those who broke the law to do the right thing, and those who are developing alternatives and building and rebuilding communities.' Helen Matthews Lewis lived a remarkable life of purpose and protest."

In its tribute, the Yonder excerpted two of Lewis's essays from a 2012 book with writings by and about her. In the essays, "She argues that rural community development must begin with a moral economy," the Yonder says. From "Rebuilding Communities: A Twelve-Step Recovery Program":

Rural communities are still part of national and international economies, the agendas of which do not include preserving or reviving small rural communities. Until the needs and agendas of these communities are included in national and international development plans, community efforts will be stalled and short-circuited. Rural communities will continue to be disposable, and the creativity and participation, which these grassroots movements encourage and develop, will be ignored. That is why communities must also enter the policy arena, change development policies so that this vigor, energy, and social capital can be used to develop socially responsible, democratic, and sustainable communities throughout the world.

From "The Highlander Center: Working for Justice and a Moral Economy": I am seeing the beginnings of a new social movement of students and young people questioning the status quo and asking for a new social order. There are many community grassroots groups trying to rebuild their communities, deal with environmental problems, develop coalitions. Many women have emerged as leaders trying to rebuild communities. But people seem less confident of what to do about the many problems. The inaccessibility of economic decisions leaves people feeling both frustrated and very vulnerable. We need something today to bring people together to deal with the destruction of our communities, degradation of the environment, growing poverty, economic distress and alienation and not just in our country but worldwide. We cannot hide from the fact that we are part of a global economy, but we can work to be cooperative, helpful and not exploitive. We live on a fragile planet—we are all spinning around together and need to come together to save us all.

Black farm leader says USDA should halt farm foreclosures

"Senators were wrong in repealing a program for $4 billion in debt relief for socially disadvantaged farmers, said John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, on Tuesday," Chuck Abbott reports for the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

"A Virginia farmer, Boyd called on President Biden to declare a moratorium on [Agriculture Department] farm foreclosures while Congress worked on a new relief plan. The program has been tied up in court for months by lawsuits claiming it was unfair to white farmers. The Senate repealed the 2021 language on Sunday at the same time it approved $5.3 billion to help financially distressed farmers and farmers who suffered discrimination in USDA farm lending programs. The new package was tucked into the USDA section of the mammoth climate, health-care and tax bill that was passed by the Senate and faces a House vote on Friday."

The $5.3 billion approved Sunday would disproportionately help farmers of color, but does not address race directly. Instead, Abbott notes, "it offers $3.1 billion in 'immediate relief' to 'distressed' borrowers of money through USDA direct or guaranteed loan programs, and $2.2 billion, in payments of up to $500,000 per producer, to 'farmers, ranchers or forest landowners determined to have experienced discrimination' in USDA farm lending programs before last Jan. 1."

USDA has acknowledged that it has discriminated against non-white farmers in administering its programs, Abbott reports. So it's appropriate to offer such farmers direct loan forgiveness, Boyd said: "To acknowledge and correct racism is not unconstitutional or racist."

Human-rights group names 900 Republican state legislators in 'far right' groups, but that adjective doesn't fit some

"Nearly 22 percent of Republican state lawmakers nationwide have joined at least one far-right Facebook group, according to a new survey by an advocacy group that tracks bigotry and attacks on democracy," Daniela Altimari reports for Route Fifty. "The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights found 875 legislators representing all 50 states who have joined white-nationalist, paramilitary, QAnon, anti-immigrant, 'Stop the Steal' or other groups tied to the far right. The Facebook groups that the report focuses on are active on a range of issues, and not all of them embrace racist or nationalist ideologies." The listings also include organizations such as Right to Life, No Left Turn in Education and groups opposing mask mandates.

The report examined all 7,383 state legislators who served in 2021-22. Three Democratic legislators joined such groups, but no Libertarian or independent lawmakers had. For the purposes of the report, the IREHR defined "far right" groups as "those advocating for changes that would significantly undermine political, social and/or economic equality along class, racial, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status or religious lines, Altimari reports.