THE OTHER
AMERICANS
social workers like Tyler, and has
been credited with keeping infant
mortality rates markedly lower in
Sharkey and Issaquenna Counties,
compared to rates in other parts
of the Delta.
Yet endeavors like these, along
with the slow drip of food stamps
and cash assistance, stakeholders suggest, are mere bandages on
a much more systemic problem.
“We need the powers that be, the
policymakers and the landowners—
they need to create opportunities
for people to benefit from living in
a rural community,” says Dorsey
Johnson, a co-director of the Cary
Christian Center. “We have to create something, you know, that will
have some longevity and will help
to sustain our community.”
Not doing so can be expensive.
In a recent essay published in The
Clarion Ledger, Charlie Mitchell, a
syndicated columnist and assistant
dean of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi, lambasted
state and federal officials for watching the Delta languish and letting
taxpayers foot the bill:
“Take Humphreys County.
There, the cost of direct government aid, in all forms, per person,
was $11,385.31 in 2010. The same
HUFFINGTON
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cost in DeSoto County, which was
Mississippi’s fastest growing in
the last census, was $4,717.20. So,
clearly, given that the expense to
the taxpaying public can be 2.5
times greater per person where
poverty rules than where there’s
an economic pulse, there’s an economic imperative (on top of the
social imperative) to seek a turnaround for the region as aggressively as possible.”
Mitchell decried the fact that
major assembly plants for brands
like Toyota and Nissan have found
their way to other parts of the
state in recent years, and he had
special opprobrium for Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, the
powerful member of Congress who
has represented the Delta counties for more than 20 years. “He
practices politics the old-s chool
way,” Mitchell wrote. “Reward
your friends, punish your enemies, tell your constituents repeatedly they are hapless victims
of an unfair world and then dance
off to enjoy junket after junket.”
Thompson declined to be interviewed for this article, but in
a phone call, a spokesman for his
office, Cory Horton, ticked off a
number of programs and federal
funds that the congressman had
secured for his district over the
years, including substantial funding for Army Corps of Engineer