Urban and Rural Development

By Elaine Kporha

Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 26

President Carter’s urban policy proposal, calling for a “new partnership to conserve America’s communities,” has been highly publicized, roundly criticized, and widely analyzed. It is designed to reverse the deterioration of urban life by redirecting existing federal programs and creating new approaches to the solution of economic and social problems in distressed areas.

The question now being asked by some is whether or not it offers relief to rural as well as to urban areas; in other words, to coin a phrase, is it also a rural politan” policy?

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Patricia Harris, urban problems are found everywhere. The emphasis of the policy is on combating poverty and unemployment wherever it exists. Therefore, the Administration has stated that both rural and urban areas may be considered distressed” and rural areas may be eligible to participate in some urban policy programs.

Approximately 73 percent (or 3,245) Southern municipal governments have populations under 2,500. Not all of these municipalities are “distressed,” but a good number of them are. According to HUD, 65 percent (or 2,131) of these small cities could meet HUD’s standards for social and economic distress. (See accompanying chart.) Based on the large number of officially distressed small cities, the urban policy would appear to provide greatly needed aid for the South.

Two urban policy programs, the National Development Bank and the Urban Development Action Grants (UDAG) would, according to President Carter’s statement, benefit distressed rural as well as distressed urban areas. These two programs, however, are the ones facing the greatest difficulties.

Carter’s proposal for the creation of a $17.4 billion National Development Bank will encourage businesses to locate or expand in economically distressed urban and rural areas by reducing by an estimated 60% the cost of financing business and industrial development in these areas. The difficulty it faces is the unlikelihood of Congress approving any new programs requiring increased spending.

Carter also proposed a $275 million increase in Urban Development Action Grant funding. The increase would be combined with grants and loans from the National Development Bank and with other funds from the Economic Development Administration. UDAG, funded in 1977 at $1 .2 billion for three years, authorizes grants to revitalize a community’s economic base through joint public-private development projects. 75 percent of the $400 million annual authorization goes to cities with populations over 50,000; 25 percent is to be used for grants to smaller cities and towns. All cities under 25,000 must meet at least three of four minimum distress standards. Eligible cities with population under 2,500 can be considered for UDAG assistance if they pass an additional test. According to final federal regulations for UDAG, the HUD Secretary must determine, in each case, that the city has demonstrated its capacity to successfully conduct a UDAG-type project.

Small cities and towns have already begun to compete for their 25 percent share of the Urban Development Action Grants. Although it is too early to evaluate the impact of the grants in specific locations, it seems timely to conclude that, generally, the smallest distressed areas cannot realistically expect urban programs to provide much relief for their distress.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Minority Participation in Construction Of Atlanta Airport

By Dave Miller and Gordon Kenna

Vol. 1, No. 2, 1978, pp. 24-25

Contracting opportunities for minority-owned businesses have been the subject of much attention of late, but the methods of achieving minority business participation are not so well known. Certainly, this is a new endeavor for both contractors and purchasing departmentswhich is often bound by law and tradition to do business using conservative and often unimaginative methods. But given a genuine desire and commitment to encourage minority business participation, affirmative action goals can be reached and even exceeded within the principles of sound business management and bidding practices.

One such successful program has been implemented by the City of Atlanta in the construction of the new terminal building for the HartsfieldAtlanta International Airport. At the direction of Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, three goals were established for the Airport Terminal Construction Program: (1) completion by a certain date; (2) completion within budget and; (3) significant involvement of small and minority business enterprise.

The last goal envisioned a role considerably more encompassing than the conventional Equal Employment Opportunity standards commonly applied to construction programs of a large scale nature. Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Programs in the past affected the composition of the staffs of the prime contractor and the sub-contractor, but not necessarily the ownership of the contracting firms. In those EEO/AA matters, Atlanta’s “Hometown and Federal Plans” applied, however, it was in the area of ownership that the City wished to develop contracting procedures to increase the opportunities of small and minority firms to participate. Minority firms are those in which at least 50 percent of the ownership is held by persons who are defined by the United States Equal Opportunity Commission as minorities.

Atlanta has enjoyed tremendous success with each goal; the project is on time, is within budget and has afforded and fostered impressive minority involvement figures. The project averages 26 percent minority business participation of the $200 million in contracts to date. There are 96 individual contracts awarded to minority firms, 43 supply/vendors, 51 sub-contracts and two minority firms as primes. Minority Employment averages 43 percent of the present construction work force of 1500.

As a first step towards acheiving the cooperation and understanding of all parties, firms interested in bidding were required to complete a thorough prequalification process. Only firms that successfully prequalified were permitted to bid. Initially there was some misunderstanding of what was required in the prequalification process but soon it became clear that this procedure was helpful to the City, contractors, sub-contractors and the airlines.

By requiring firms to prequalify, the City can assure that all bidders are capable of doing the work, and understand the conditions and requirements of the job, especially with respect to the goals of minority business utilization.

To achieve Atlanta’s multiple goals it was required that the prime contractors (for each individual contract), (a) develop a comprehensive organizational structure and (b) award subcontracts on a competitive basis. At the same time the prime contractor was to consider and utilize as appropriate, a variety of special arrangements designed to foster equal opportunities for small and minority business enterprise participation.

CITY ACTIVITIES

To assist the prime contractor in achieving the City’s expectations, the City agreed to (a) monthly or semimonthly payments to the prime contractor so that it could meet any critical cash flow needs of its subcontractors, and (b) reimburse the prime contractor for bulk purchases of materials and equipment (which was properly received and satisfactorily stored) at the succeeding monthly or semi-monthly payment.

At the request of the prime contractor, the City, when necessary, agreed to assist in efforts to obtain from outside sources the desired assistance to small and minority business enterprises if such was required to strengthen the management expertise of such firms to manage and carry out the terms of their contracts.

The City utilized the services of its engineering joint venture to (1) assist the City’s Contract Compliance Office in monitoring compliance with EEO/AA and small minority business enterprise programs; (2) breakdown contracts in smaller work elements and; (3) provide suggestions to the City on ways to further the technical and managerial expertise of small and minority firms.

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Atlanta also established an advisory committee to assist in reviewing the continuing program of the prime contractor and sub-contractors concerned with EEO/AA compliance and small and minority business enterprises participation and made recommendations to the City concerning such performance. This group acted in an advisory capacity only to the City and included representatives of the City, the airline industry, the prime contractor, a trade association, and two (2) representatives of private non-profit organizations concerned with minority employment and business participation.

In summary, the results of the above special arrangements between the City, prospective contractors and subcontractors are a program (1) that is successful; (2) that exceeds initial expectations in terms of depth and; (3) is now being considered as a model for future large scale construction projects throughout the United States. Of particular interest are the results of a study recently released by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Development Aid Program (ADAP). This study dramatically underscores Atlanta’s success in giving minority enterprises a fair share of the work and benefits created by this project. Of the $330.4 million in construction project at 27 major airports in the United States with Federal participation, $56.3 million have gone to minority firms. Of this $56.3 million, $52 million has been awarded to minority firms participating in the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport Expansion Program. Nearly 89 percent of all dollars of federally assisted construction programs at those major airports going to minority firms were contracted through the City of Atlanta. These figures demonstrate the City’s administration, Atlanta airlines, and the prime contractors commitment to affirmative action programs, and prove that minority participation goals can be reached in a business-like manner.

EDUCATION

By SRC Staff

Vol. 1, No. 4, 1979, pp. 22

“Alienation is real, and it’s growing! Citizens, young and old, and of varied political persuasions are expressing more and more their feelings of separation from government and politics they feel disenfranchised. They want to improve conditions and help solve governmental and political problems, but they don’t know where to begin.”

So stated Marion Gonzalez, administrator of Georgia Close Up, a year-round, state-wide organization, funded by the Metropolitan Foundation of Atlanta, that is attempting to address itself to filling this void by providing programs in state government education for high school students in Georgia.

The organization’s mission, according to Gonzalez, is to formulate and implement programs which provide high school students with opportunities to study state and local government processes, politics and issues – in depth and “close-up.” Their activities include panel presentations, keynote speaker addresses, interviews with individuals in government, public interest groups and media and topical discussions with staff members. The “close-up” program emphasizes participation, questioning, research and involvement by participants. All issues, Gonzalez says, are presented in a multi-partisan fashion and students are encouraged to fully explore all aspects of issues presented during programs. These issues, she reports, consist not only of specific items such as ERA, prison reform, tax reform, etc., but also include more indepth, humanistic examinations of why these issues are important, the historical development of our government ideologies and why people accept or reject them, the processes and problems involved in attempting to effect change or avoid changes in government laws and processes, and a host of other “valueoriented” items for thought.

A recent program of the project was the Georgia Close Up Workshop, conducted from October 5th through December I. Thirty students, grades 10-12, were selected from approximately 120 state-wide high school nominations. Students met in the Sheraton Biltmore Hotel in Atlanta where they were housed during the live sessions.

They studied the following issues: (I) Tax Reform; (2) Mental Health; (3) Education; (4) Prison Reform; (5) ERA; (6) the Death Penalty; (7) Abortion; (8) The Effect of the Media on Government and Public Opinion; (9) Marijuana Reform; (10) Students’ Legal Rights; (11) Civil Rights; (12) State Budgeting; (13) Federalism; and (14) Georgia’s relations with other countries.

Speakers on these issues included government officials, both elected and appointed, representatives of public interest groups and organizations of all kinds. Among them were: Dave Benner, Office of Planning and Budget (Prison Allocations); Clint Deveaux, president, ACLU of Georgia (Civil Liberties and Social Reform); Rick Reed, Clearinghouse on Georgia Prisons and Jails (Prison Reform); Pat Malone, Department of Human Resources (Health); Fred Broder, Georgia Association of Educators (Education in Georgia); Dr. Charles King, Urban Crisis Center (Human Interaction and Race Relations); and Wes Sarginson, Channel 2 T.V. News (Prison Conditions).

In order to allow other students throughout Georgia the opportunity to benefit from their experiences, the workshop participants prepared articles for publication in a loose-leaf type handbook to he published and made available to schools throughout the state, at the option of local educators. The booklet consists of issues on civil liberties, education, energy and budgeting. The reading level of the handbook is geared toward 8th and 9th graders in order to broaden their knowledge and spark their interest now in preparation for tomorrow.

According to Scott Smith, one of the students in the program from Open Campus West in Tucker, Georgia Close Up has given him a fighting opportunity to challenge others in the field of social sciences. “It has enabled me,” he says, “to push for reforms, information and issues I never before had the chance to grasp.” Shawn Turk of Collins High School in College Park says that she feels the program will continue to aid her in school long after it is over. “It has shown me ways to do research, compile materials, group leadership, different types of problem solving methods and how to arrange speakers,” she said.

The staff of Georgia Close Up is interested in responding to inquiries about their recent programs and discussing their plans for the future. In addition to Gonzalez as administrator, the staff includes Hilton Smith as director and Sandy Mershon as staff assistant. Write to : Georgia Close Up, 165 Walker St., S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30313. (404) 586-0947 or 586-0007.

HEALTH CARE

By Staff

Vol. 1, No. 4, 1979, pp. 20-21

Gayle Becker and Elaine Clark had been teaching nursing for over 16 years in an academic setting and felt the need to branch out into a different area of nursing.

“Last fall Gayle and I decided that initiating a program of health care to migrant workers in the Sand Mountain area of Alabama might not only be a service to the community, but would allow us to fulfill our needs for personal and professional development as sell as allow us a means to identify additional learning experiences for our students,” said Clark.

The two of them applied for sabbatical leave for the spring and summer quarters and devoted the spring to upgrading their technical skills. They learned to speak Spanish, read hooks and magazine articles about migrant workers, and contacted appropriate individuals and agencies in DeKaIb County, which is tucked away in the northeastern corner of the state, bordered by Georgia to the east.

Alabamians have long considered the people of the region fiercely independent and as rugged as the land. It is from this land – rocks, dust and more rocks – that potato farmers gouge out their living.

The nurses held more than 40 individual conferences, placed more than 50 long distance telephone calls and wrote approximately 30 letters in preparation for the summer experience. The biggest problem – establishing a clinic – was overcome when the Rev. Milton Pope and his wife, Bela, offered to share their facility at the DeKaIb Baptist Mission in Rainsville. Migrant workers attended the mission on Friday evenings and Sunday mornings for worship services and the combined spiritual-physical setting was a harmonious pairing.

However, fact was to bear out that the bulk of their work consisted of traveling in either Becker’s station wagon or Clark’s compact car to the seven camps, all within a 30-mile radius of Rainsville.

“Although an estimated 4.000 migrant workers are in Alabama each year, this fact seems virtually unknown to most residents of the state,” said Becker. “Needless to say, primary health care is extremely fragmented and secondary care is difficult to obtain. To compound the problems of the migrant worker, there are cultural and language difficulties that result in communication barriers with others.”

The migrant workers’ lack of money, lack of insurance, highly mobile state and cultural differences often result in difficulties when they attempt to enter the health care system. Migrant workers are paid for the hours they work. They do not receive pay during rainy days, poor crops, equipment breakdowns or visits to a physician.

“Federal aid is of little help,” said Clark. “These people rarely spend more than six weeks in one location, and by the time paper work has been prepared, the workers have moved to a new location.”

The remoteness of the camps and lack of telephone service presented additional problems to the nurses. What had been envisioned as a purely clinical setting by Becker and Clark grew almost immediately into an advocate role. Hours were spent on the telephone and in cars, driving to reach the correct person or agency dispensing needed money, information or transportation.

In accordance with physician guidelines, minor health problems such as colds, diarrhea and skin problems were treated at the clinic or at camp sites. Minor emergencies such as toothaches or more complex problems such as miscarriages and job injuries required referrals to physicians. A total of 115 individual clients were seen and 185 contacts were made with clients. The number included 44 women, 20 men, 45 children and six infants.

“The poor living conditions struck me first,” said Becker. “Living facilities in one camp included converted chicken houses, an old school building and numerous shacks or abandoned houses. If the facility contained more than one small room, it usually was occupied by a number of families.”

Both saw that in many instances the shelters had no sinks or window screens, and the usual furnishings consisted of a one- or two-eyed gas or electric burner, a dilapidated

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refrigerator and old bedding placed on concrete blocks or boards. One refrigerator often served a number of families.

Generally, children played in bare, dusty, wet or muddy yards. No playground equipment was available for them, forcing them to “make do” with whatever was available.

Lack of health insurance and retirement security are problems which need to be addressed, according to the nurses. “It seems difficult for the migrant worker to set security programs very high on his priority list, since he appears to view his major needs as those things which affect him from moment to moment,” Clark said. “Planning for the future seems beyond his grasp.”

“Health education is needed in such areas as basic hygiene, nutrition, family planning, environmental health control and preventive measures for good health,” observed Becker. “Helping the individual to understand the need to prevent illness and injury in order to reduce absenteeism from work and curtail doctor bills is also a high priority need.”

Almost all migrant workers receive minimum wage for hourly shed work and 15 cents per basket for potatoes gathered in the field. However, most migrant workers do not receive the full amount of pay because they are indebted to the crew leader for a certain percentage of their wages. The crew leader serves as interpreter for the nonEnglish speaking migrants, negotiator in determining wages and other essentials and an advocate in making arrangements for various jobs.

“We contacted a number of organizations and individuals throughout DeKaib County and the state in an attempt to obtain figures on the number of migrants in the area, but with no luck,” said Clark. “Even the growers had no accurate records of their employees, but did give rather vague estimates, such as between 50 and 100.

“On the basis of these figures, we estimated there were about 650 migrants on Sand Mountain during the summer months with approximately 315 located in the seven camps we served,” she added.

Clark and Becker now are working to convince officials at the University of Alabama School of Nursing that students might profit from a similar experience if it were to become part of the curriculum.

Other recommendations include procurement of a mobile clinic, development of day care centers for migrant children, development of a composite health record for migrants which could be carried with them from location to location, enforcement of building codes and environmental health requirements, and development of a transportation program for migrants and rural citizens who need health care in distant locations.

Solar Greenhouses: A Method of Survival for Small Farmers

By the Staff of the Graham Center

Vol. 1, No. 6, 1979, pp. 10-12

Today, the American small farmer is an endangered species. As control of land and the farm economy has concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, one of the biggest migrations in human history has occurred during the past 40 years as millions of people have moved into urban areas. In 1977, American farms vanished at the rate of 500 a week. In the South, the nation’s fastest growing area, change in rural patterns are especially dramatic. Estimates project that Black-owned land in the rural South is disappearing at the rate of 6000 acres per week. At the present rate of attrition, the Black Southern farmer may well be extinct by 1990.

Preserving the small farm in this country will require significant changes in our present political and economic systems. Through a reliance upon non-renewable fuels and increasingly complex technology, U.S. agriculture has become agribusiness. One movement towards change has been the development of low-cost, energy-efficient methods and new skills appropriate to the background and resources of small farmers.

In support of this development, the Frank Porter Graham Center, a 400-acre demonstration farm and training center located in Anson County, North Carolina, is sponsoring a series of solar greenhouse construction workshops. These workshops will introduce solar-heating techniques, teach building skills, and begin to develop a local market for greenhouse construction. The Graham Center is conducting the greenhouse workshops with funds from the National Association of Farmworkers Organizations (NAFO) and the consultation and on-site assistance of the Solar Greenhouse/ Employment Project.

The Graham Center was established in 1972

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as a project of the National Sharecropper’s Fund. At present II farmers from Anson County and surrounding areas are enrolled in the Graham Center’s Small Farm Development Program, which offers technical and practical training for small-scale limited resource farmers. The greenhouse workshops are a component of this demonstration program which includes projects such as a 10sow pasture operation, 30-acre crop rotation system, large-scale composting, and dairy goat demonstration.

The Graham Center believes that solar-heated greenhouses can help cut the rising costs of food and energy. Virgil Chance, the Center’s farm supervisor, says, “With a solar greenhouse, you can grow vegetables in the wintertime and start planting earlier in the spring. You can also heat your house with it. You can grow potted plants and flowers, either for the family or for making money.”

Another of the workshops’ primary objectives is to train a limited number of farmers in greenhouse design and construction techniques. The Solar Greenhouse/ Employment Project envisions small farmers using these skills to create off-season employment opportunities for themselves.

Graham Center and the Solar Greenhouse Employment Project encouraged residents of Wadesboro, Charlotte, and other nearby communities to participate in the workshops. The first session was held during the last week of January. Using new materials, participants built an II X 18 greenhouse directly onto the southside of the Graham Center’s main building. The total cost of the pro-

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ject was $850, and the greenhouse now generates a substantial part of the main building’s wintertime heating supply.

Despite unusually cold and wet January weather, 45 people – including 17 local farmers attended the first workshop. Trainees were involved with all aspects of construction – pouring the foundation, framing, glazing, insulating, sealing, hanging and finishing drywall and painting. Instruction was also given in greenhouse design, cost estimating, and in specifying and collecting materials.

The second workshop, held in early February, was designed to demonstrate low-cost construction methods relevant to local needs and available resources. This greenhouse was built onto the southside of a Graham Center double-wide mobile home at a cost of $400. As in the rest of the rural South, trailors comprise an increasingly high percentage of single-family residences in Anson County. The supplemental heat provided by a solar greenhouse has been proven to lower the high cost of heating traitors by 25-40 percent.

The second greenhouse was built by local farmers and Graham Center staff with technical assistance from members of the Solar Greenhouse Employment Project. Costs were held to a minimum by using recycled building materials. The building crew salvaged metal roofing and lumber from an abandoned tenant cabin on the Graham Center’s property. Bricks, railroad ties, and other used materials were also collected around the farm and county.

In addition to their on-job teaching, Solar Greenhouse/ Employment Project conducted a series of evening classes. They covered the concept of solar energy as an alternative heating source, financing and maintaining the greenhouse, and the different uses of the structure in growing vegetables, ornamental plants, and herbs.

Methods of greenhouse composting and pest control were also discussed. The classes were held as part of the Graham Center’s regular twice-a-week curriculum for local farming families. All participants received building plans and detailed instructions following both workshops.

The third solar greenhouse, scheduled for construction in early March, will be sited next to a local farmer’s home and built of salvaged materials. Seven Anson County families (and 21 other participants in the first two greenhouse workshops) have expressed interest in adding on a greenhouse. “Around here we usually start to sow seeds on Good Friday. If I had a greenhouse we could set out with transplants already five or six inches tall,” says Alex Waring, a local farmer and member of the Graham Center staff.

The third project will be planned and built by local farmers who have been involved in the previous two. The Graham Center hopes to establish a revolving loan fund which will enable members of the Small Farm Development Program to borrow interest-free “seed” money for greenhouse construction. North Carolina state tax laws already allow a 25 percent credit for investments in energy-saving home improvements.

The combination of financial incentives, newly-learned skills, and cooperative working arrangements applied to this model of accessible, low-cost technology have made solar greenhouses one modest, but realistic way that people in this community can help themselves survive as small farmers in the rural South.

This article was prepared by the staff of the Graham Center.

Interchange: In This Issue

By Betty Norwood Chaney

Vol. 1, No. 7, 1979, p. 2

On February 16-18, the Southern Regional Council (SRC) held its Annual Meeting in Atlanta at the Colony Square Hotel. This year the Council renewed its charter after 25 years of incorporation, and to commemorate the occasion presented a three-day conference on ” A New Charter for the South’s Future.”

The conference brought together a variety of distinguished participants from the fields of education, law, economics, civil rights and health care to review developments and conditions in the South. This issue of Southern Changes reports on that conference and reproduces three of the addresses made there.

Leslie Dunbar, former executive director of SRC and presently director of the Field Foundation, was one of a panel of three to speak on “The Role of the Law in the South.” The primary role of law in the South, he says, has been to keep Blacks “in their place.” In his presentation carried here, he offers four concerns that ought to be basic to the right role of law in the South.

In a discussion of “Human Rights: From the South to South Africa,” Wallace Terry, former Newsweek correspondent, now professor of journalism at Howard University, shares someof his experiences with Black troops in Viet Nam. He calls for an enlightened leadership which places human values above expediency and voiced his hopes and aspiration for the nation.

Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall, Saturday’s luncheon speaker, also talked of human rights. “The whole human rights movement is very important throughout the world, and it’s not dividible,” he says. “You cannot talk about human rights in other countries, and ignore them here.” His main concern, however, was about certain “universal imperatives,” inflation being one of them, that makes it difficult to help those who most need help.

In “Soapbox” this month, Steve Suits, publisher of Southern Changes and also executive director of SRC, reminds us that differences which continue to separate Southerners from one another on the basis of race and poverty remain deep and unyielding barriers. In looking toward a “new charter for the South’s future,” he cautions us that progress of the last 25 years must not plund us from the fact that our task is not complete. “Improvements,” he says, “are not final accomplishments.”

Our department pieces this month– education, rural and ruban development and Southern politics– also report on sessions from the conference and offer some perspectives on the future.

In addition, in this issue Bill Finger reports on recent J.P. Stevens and Company stockholders meeting in Greenville, S.C., and Alice Swift relays the activities of a small rural town in Georgia where the Black community is “coming to focus, demanding its rights.”

URBAN AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT:Solutions to Southern Rural Problems Sought

By Janet Terry

Vol. 1, No. 7, 1979, pp. 27-28

Is the South truly in the midst of an overdue, unparalleled economic boom, or is the image a mirage, fashioned by media hype, overeager expectations, and scattered development?

Participants on the rural development panel at SRC’s Annual Meeting did not debate the question long. In the words of Charles Prejean, executive director of the Atlanta-based Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC), “Despite the unsubtantiated claims of explosive Southern growth which emanate from Northern observers, the South, and especially the rural South, remains deeply impoverished.”

The poverty rate of Southern states, according to a report compiled by the Federation, is 22 percent double the 1! percent rate of the rest of the nation. Ten million of the total 27 million poor people in the country live in the 11 states of the South. If that’s not sobering enough to deflate the notion of a land of milk and honey, Prejean also revealed that half the Black families in the rural South are poor, as compared to 17 percent of the White families. In fact, he says, 17 percent of all Southern Black families live on less than hQlf the income that is defined as the poverty line.

To explain the reasons for it, Prejean pointed to imbalanced growth within the national economy and capital intensive methods of modern agriculture. That translates into measurably increased personal income for some over the last few years, but only for those who live in sections of the industrialized North and in a few skyscrapered Southern cities (with growing pockets of inner city poverty). It also means that Southern agricultural workers, including thousands of Black small farm owners, have been forced off the land, their way of life disrupted by new technology, and left without adequate industrial employment opportunities and training to take up the slack.

The search for solutions to the Southern rural realities of the 1970s has led a growing number of individuals and organizations to believe that the answers lie more in cooperative efforts, than in strictly competitive methods.

Since 1967, for instance, FSC has maintained a multi-state association of community-based, communitycontrolled co-op programs which provide a number of services and training opportunities to 30,000 member families: health care, legal services, literacy training, energy conservation, and housing rehabilitation. Agricultural training is provided on the Federation’s 1,325 acre farming demonstration center in Sumter County, Alabama. And 100 VISTA volunteers work in research, education, and co-op credit unions.

A second project grounded in

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cooperative economics was outlined during the session by Lindsay Jones, a staff member of the Agricultural Marketing Project (AMP). AMP is an organization which operates by the old adage, “find the shortest, simplest way between the earth, the hands and the mouth.”

Organizers of AMP believe that the current shift to corporate agribusiness, away from familysized farms, has created “a managerialbureaucratic-financial overhead that is crushing farmers and consumers alike, along with rural communities all over America.”

AMP’s approach to a workable solution is Food Fair, a project conceived on a “human scale.” A Food Fair is a neighborhood farme(s market, often located in a church parking lot, at which homegrowers sell their vegetables, fruits, cheeses and honey on regularly scheduled sales days. Since 1975, AMP has established Food Fairs in 26 cities in Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina.

In addition to an estimated $500,000 in sales during this initial period, the Food Fairs have resulted in lower prices and fresher products for urban consumers, Jones says, and has increased income for participating farmers “by 10 percent the first year of participation, and 16 percent the second year.”

But more importantly in the long run, according to Jones, Food Fairs, co-ops, and other cooperative economic ventures will become increasingly strategic as small farmers and agricultural workers struggle to survive in a rural South where land and production are becoming more monopolistic.

Both Jones and Prejean agree, that while large agribusinesses survive and sometimes thrive, economic reality for the majority of rural Southerners is a far cry from the prosperity often attributed to the South today.

A freelance writer, Janet Terry lives in Atlanta.

The South’s Economic Future

By Staff

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 3-4

Southern state development leaders prefer low-wage industries and anti-union laws as the primary thrust for the future economic growth in the region, according to a survey released by the Southern Regional Council (SRC).

Citing both “bewilderment and hope” in the findings of the survey of board members of the Southern state economic development agencies, the SRC reports show that “right-to-work” laws that restrict union activities are the most preferred strategy for Southern states to attract industry. As the same time, improved vocational education and upgraded general education were endorsed as two ther steps for the South’s future economic development.

The areas of growth which the development leaders endorsed in the SRC survey completed in late 1978 were sectors “where the wage rates have been low in the South.” For example, the food processing industry was a high preference of Southern development leaders for future growth while wage rates in the industry have been among the lowest in the region during the last decade.

Steve Suitts, executive director of the Council and author of the report, says that the development board whose members were surveyed reflect only a narrow segment of the Southern population and “need to be more representative.” Only two percent of the 169 development board members in the Southern states are Black or other minority and less than one percent are female. “There is no representation of community-based organizations which substatially represent the poor” and few members are from labor groups. The report also finds a need for more representation of “small industrial owners and merchants throughout the region.”

9(Board members on the state development boards in North Carolina were not included in the survey because the agency was in the process of legislative change during the time of the survey. The report is based upon questionnaires which were completed by 43 of the develpment board members in 10 Southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, & Virginia).

State development boards and agencies in the South have primary responsibility for establishing priorities and programs for economic development. Southern agencies annually spend more than fifteen million dollars of state fnds to promote the states’ economic fortunes largely through personal contact, recruitment, traveling, and advertising.

Almost all development board members surveyed endorsed “balanced growth” for the South’s future yet a few admitted that they didn’t know what the term actually meant. The chemical industries were, in fact, the first to choice of most leaders surveyed. One in five board members preferred it. Other areas of high preference included mining, manufacturing, tourism, and entertainment.

Suitts points out that develpment leaders have a preference for areas of economic growth which haven’t had rapid job growth in the South during the last nine years. For example, almost 17 percent of those surveyed chose agriculture as their first choice for economic development. “The fact is that jobs in agriculture have been declining over the past 20 years,” Suitts said. If Southern states intend to develp jobs in areas of low growth, “promotional activities alone will not secure such an ambitious objective as reordering the areas of growth within the South.If the trend indicates that development boards do not place the highest priority with creatingjobs in economic development, the very purposes of the agencies are in question,” the report states.

The choices for economic development analyzed by political affiliation revealed surprisiing results. For example, strong and weak Democrats were more likely to endorse low-wage industries as preferred areas of development than were Republicans. Strong Republicans selected high-wage industries more often as their first preference than did any other political group.

Weak Democrats and Independents — not Republicans — chose “right-to-work” laws as the foremost strategy for economic development more than any other political group. Almost half of both weak Republicans and Independents believed that “right-to-work” laws were the preeminent strategies for the South’s

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economic future.

The report also noted that native-born Southerners were more likely to endorse low-wage industries and “right-to-work” laws than were those not born within the region. “At the same time,” Suitts stated, “it is encouraging that lifelong Southerners to note that development leaders born within the South are those who believe that bi-racial cooperation is in any way important in economic development for the future.”

The Council is sending its finding to the state economic development comissions, federal agencies, and Southern governors. The report recommends that Southern governos appoint a more diverse board for economic development and that the agencies institue more focused, direct activities showing that the primary objective of economic development in the region is creating gainful employment for Southerners.

In addition, the report recommends that state agencies “abandon the preferences for areas and strategies of development that stress cheap labour and anti-unionism. ‘A good day’s work for a good day’s pay’ should be enough of a philosophy and slogan to emphasize the attractions of an energetic work force in the South,” the report concludes.

Copies of the report are available from the Southern Regional Council, 75 Marietta Street, N.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30303 at $3.00 each.

Making Things Healthy

By Harriet Swift

Vol. 2, No. 2., 1979, pp. 12-16

There’s a familiar 1960s feel to the scene that recalls VISTA television spots: energetic, attractive college students bustle up and down the halls of the summer-emptied Black high school. Country people, mostly Black but a smattering of Whites, come into the building slowly, a little hesitantly. It’s late morning on a sweltering July weekday in the Alabama Black Belt. Most of the people trickling into the Amelia Johnson High School in Thomaston are elderly or women with young children. They are here to have a physical examination, get their blood, eyesight, and hearing tested, have their blood pressure checked and perhaps receive some advice from a nutritionist and law student. They’re participating in the health fair.

The health fair, with its retinue of 30 travelling members has already been in Thomaston once and has set up in two other rural Alabama counties for weeklong stays. Now, the health fair is back in town for a follow-up week before returning to the other towns for second visits that will end with community meetings to consider the state of health care in the area and what local folks want to do about it.

Debby Hicks, 21, one of two community organizers living in Thomaston for the summer says that almost 500 people have been through the health fair here. Hicks, an anthropology graduate student at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, explains that her job is to help the community prepare for the health fair’s arrival then ensure that all the necessary follow-up work is done after the “travelling” part of the fair leaves town. Follow-up can involve seeing that records are sent to area doctors, arranging for visits to specialists if some unusual medical problem has been discovered during a check-up, or assisting community work to build a clinic.

With the help of three CETA workers

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arranged through the county, Hicks and the other community organizer, Ann Wade, have visited almost every church and civic group in Marengo County telling people about the health fair, urging them to come and enlisting their support.

“This is not a do-gooder project,” says Wade, 24, who hopes to go to medical school next year. “The community must ask for us to come, then they have to provide housing and food for the students. There’s got to be something here for us to build on.”

Health fairs have been an energetic force in rural Alabama since 1974, when a group of Alabama undergraduates, medical and nursing students began seeking “something to build on” as part of their commitment to improving rural health care. Sponsored by the Student Coalition for Community Health, a loosely-organized group based around the church-connected Wesley Foundation at the University of Alabama, the health fairs have had more spectacular successes in the past five years. One small town in North Alabama now has a doctor, clinic, and pharmacy, and other communities have established nurse-practitioner clinics and organized community improvement projects.

Not every community visited by the health fairs has found tangible results from the visit, but the coalition doesn’t write off these experiences as failures. “Sometimes,” observes a follow-up report written on a disappointing health fair site, “the best thing to help a community is to leave it alone.”

There’s a healthy lack of dogma about the coalition and its attitude toward the small communities that it visits.

“Rural places don’t need anyone’s charity,” bristles the Rev. Jack Shelton, the mentor of many of the student leaders involved in the coalition. “It’s important for our whole society for the rural community to be healthy.”

Shelton, who until recently served as director of the UA Wesley Foundation is now with the university administration, working in President David Mathews’ office on rural development projects. He’s pleased with the evolution of the student coalition which he describes as being “not very self-conscious about its own life.”

He traces the coalition’s beginnings to a group of “bright, hard-working, thoughtful” students that gathered around the Wesley Foundation in the early 1970s. Reading Robert Coles’ studies and after serious discussions about the South and what it meant to be a Southerner, the students eventually hooked up with a group of Vanderbilt University students in 1973. The Nashville group

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had been sponsoring health fairs in rural Tennessee since 1969, blending primary health care and community organizing in an open non-elitist manner that the Tuscaloosa group found attractive.

With seed money from the United Methodist Church, the coalition managed to win a $100,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (of the Johnson Johnson toiletry fortune) to be spread out over two years. Although the money has been handled by the university, the coalition is emphastically autonomous and totally student-run.

It’s important, says Shelton, for college students to have a chance to “prove themselves.”

“The coalition is a chance to build up confidence in themselves, to take a job and be responsible for seeing it through – pulling it off not in the best circumstances, not with the most expensive equipment. It’s hard work and some of them can’t take it.”

The benefits to the students may be as important in the long run as the immediate gains in the communities. The future doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, mathematicians, nutritionists and pillars of the community who work with the health fairs each summer attesting to its profound effect on their outlook and judgment, The “final reports” published after each summer include personal evaluations of the project by each staff member, and most of these speak poignantly of these mostly White, mostly middle class college students’ reactions to living in small Alabama communities, many of them still clouded with racism, poverty and suffering.

“I’ve yet to see anybody come out of it unscathed,” Dona Norton, an unofficial advisor to the health fairs, says cheerfully.

Asked by friends to arrange introductions between coalition organizers and officials in his home county in North Alabama during the first year of the health fairs, Norton has never had an assigned position in the health fairs, but now works with the Agricultural Marketing Project, a spin-off from the health fairs that operates under the coalition umbrella.

“This just throws ’em up against real life,” he says. “There’s no typical coalition student, and there’s no typical health fair. One week he may be living up on Sand Mountain with a nice middle class White family with a swimming pool out back and the next week he’s down in the Black Belt with some poor Black family that doesn’t even have an indoor bathroom.”

Norton, 29, has a degree in regional planning from Alabama and expresses the same strong agrarian sentiments as Shelton. During his student days Norton was “infuriated” with the campus insensitivity to the rest of the state.

“All these professors who come down from Indiana or somewhere, calling everything ‘podunk,’ dismissing everything smaller than Atlanta as not worth fooling with . . . .” he shaes his head in disbelief.

The health fairs run, in Norton’s words, on “a constant series of miracles.” Generally there is only a small carry-over group from one year to the next. Health fairs, on the whole exhilirating, are also exhausting and demanding, easy to burn out on. As soon as one summer’s fairs are over, planning starts for the next year, more often than not with an entirely new group of students. They read the final reports, talk to old coalition workers, turn to Shelton and Norton for guidance.

“But nobody can tell you how to do it,” says

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Angie Wright, a member of the three-member directorship that ran this summer’s project. Wright, 22, a recent graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina, was looking for a way to combine her interest in medicine and community organizing when she heard about the health fairs.

There’s a feeling that the coalition’s strength comes from the constant infusion of new blood. If the health fairs seem to have the same problems with sloppy organization, uneven pacing and inadequate planning year after year, then they also have a freshness and enthusiasm that has gone out of too many other well-organized humanitarian efforts.

Shelton concedes that it was “easier’ to recruit students for the projects a few years ago. “They had greater social sensitivity,” he says. “They were a little more sophisticated generation of students; less dominated by the pleasure principle.”

Still, every year, the coalition manages to fill its openings with music students who learn to take

EKGs, medical students who work as community organizers, geology students who learn how to test well water. It all gets out together, and somehow, it works.

There’s some mumbling that the health fairs are being taken for granted, that they’ve taken a backseat to other coalition related projects. But no one foresees discontinuing the health fairs, at least not any time soon. Money has been a constant worry since the Johnson grant expired. In the last three years funds have come from the Methodist church, the University Student Government Association, the Chattanooga-based Lyndhurst Foundation and the Alabama governor’s office. The other coalition projects also have to scramble for funds, usually drawing on the same sources.

Norton’s Agricultural Marketing Project is similar to one run in Tennessee setting up “food fairs” in church and public parking lots throughout the summer. Farmers and gardeners bring produce to a market site on a regularly scheduled day and sell directly to consumers. The coalition has also undertaken a study of land ownership patterns in Alabama’s Appalachian counties as part of a grant from the Appalachian Regional Council. A newly-formed Community Health Development Project, headed by two former health fair community organizers, is coordinating follow-up work in health fair communities and working toward building a network of primary health care advocates in Alabama.

The unifying idea behind the coalition’s different directions is the group’s broad definition of health.

“People in a community are healthy because of what they do for themselves,” says Shelton.

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“The coalition has been intent on joining in a partnership with the communities that want to be self-reliant. This isn’t a charity, do-gooder thing. It’s just working to make things healthy. It’s just working with folks.”

In Thomaston, there’s a palpable feeling of discouragement among the staff.

“It’s too bad you couldn’t visit one of the other sites,” a visitor is told over and over. “The response has been so much more enthusiastic than here.”

The health fairs have scored their most satisfying successes in the small, primarily White towns in the hill country of North Alabama. The health fairs have acted as a catalyst in several communities, providing a vehicle to identify and act on the dissatisfactions shared by many in the area. The coalition always works with the established lower structure, but at the same time it offers new energy and new ideas that can generate their own momentum.

The coalition has had less success in the Black Belt, where communities are often split sharply along racial lines. Previous efforts have centered in Black communities, which are desperately poor and able to marshal few resources. In Thom aston the power structure is undeniably White, while the population is perhaps slightly more Black than White. There was a pronounced hesitancy on the part of the White community to participate, although several respected authority figures sanctioned the health fair. It seems a testimony to the dedication and high goals of the students that they are unhappy with the response to the health fair in Thomaston. Several key community persons were very pleased with the health fair, one pointing out that no one can recall Whites and Blacks ever working together as equals on a mutually beneficial project before the coalition came. What will happen in the months to come is unknown, of course, but the health fair has brought a moment of cooperation and sense of purpose to Thomaston that might never have been known otherwise.

Dona Norton sees a common thread of experience in all the small communities where the health fairs have worked: “They all talk about the past, things that happened twenty years ago. And it’s always traumatic, catastrophic stuff – when the school closed, when the train depot closed, when the lake came, we used to be known as the strawberry capital of the United States. The health fair is the first positive community experience that most of these folks can remember.”

It’s a time, he says, when the potential of the community can be revealed and mobilized. “One of the wonderful things is seeing so many good people surface,” he says. “Not whittlers and fiddlers and all that goddamn craftsy stuff, just ordinary good folks. They could be on the Supreme Court, president of the United States, some of them were so wise and good, but they were born in Cedar Bluffs or Boykin or Castleberry and that’s where they’ve stayed to live and die.”

A native Alabamian, Harriet Swift is a graduate of the University of Alabama and copy editor with the Birmingham Post-Herald.

Urban and Rural Development

By Staff

Vol. 2, No. 2., 1979, pp. 21

People who help each other build their homes save more than $8,000 in construction costs according to a survey released by Rural America.

The survey of the 1978 operations of 57 mutual self-help housing projects shows the average cost of the 773 houses built by the self-help method was $24,300. The cost of a comparable contractor-built house was $32,900. Result: a saving of $8,600 on a three-bedroom, woodframe house with 1,071 square feet of living space.

The average family of four members worked 914 hours on their house over a 81/2 month period. The family provided 56.5 percent of the labor on the house. Women were responsible for nearly half (46 percent) of the family’s work contribution. The average adjusted income of the families was $8,090.

Bad weather, loan processing delays and difficulty in finding building sites were the three biggest problems faced by the self-help participants.

The average technical assistance cost was $4,800 per house. Technical assistance cost is the cost of the project staff that helps the families organize, obtain site and construction loans and learn how to build houses. Technical assistance costs are paid by grants from the Farmers Home Administration and the Department of Labor, DOL grants are channeled through Rural America.

In the self-help housing program small groups of families work together to build houses. They receive technical assistance from a staff that usually consists of a project director, a construction supervisor and a group organizer. The families obtain loans from the Farmers Home Administration to purchase building sites, buy building materials and pay sub-contractors for doing part of the construction work.

Rural America is a nonprofit membership organization set up to give people in rural areas and small towns a stronger voice in Washington. One of the main concerns of Rural America is farmworker housing. With funds from the Department of Labor, Rural America finances the administrative costs of community based non-profit organizations that help farm workers obtain decent shelter. Rural America also provides training and technical assistance to groups interested in the organization and management of self-help housing projects.

For a copy of the self-help report “1978 Survey – Self-Help Housing Projects” contact Linda Rule at the Rural America office at 1346 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 or call 202-659-2800. A copy costs $1.00.