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APPENDIX TWO
PHOTOGRAPHS OF YORK
Figure One: The Coleman Center 
Figure Two: Galleries in Downtown York
Figure Three: York’s railroad 
Figure Four: York’s former pool
Figure Five: Fence separating black and white graves
in Sumter County cemetery 
Figure Six: Streetscapes 2004
Figure Seven: Your Art Here
Figure Eight: Community Memory Map
APPENDIX ONE
POPULATION CHANGE, YORK, ALABAMA, 1930-2000
Black Population as a Percentage of Total Population in York, Alabama
Year / Total Pop. / Percent Black
1930 / 1796 / 33.9%
1940 / 1783 / 34.7%
1950 / 1774 / 36.5%
1960 / 2932 / 55.8%
1970 / 3044 / 54.9%
1980 / 3422 / 61.6%
1990 / 3160 / 70.0%
2000 / 2854 / 78.3%
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CONCLUSION
Residents involved in the art movement in York are realistic about the scale of their achievements toward integration. Despite obvious strides in raising black participation, several residents caution that “blacks who do participate are few.” Riddick states that a “limited few” are involved and that “some will never want to mix. You do have breakthroughs,” she states, “but on a limited level. The Coleman Center has made a dent in racial segregation.” Even in integrated spaces, however, blacks and whites sometimes remain separate. A filmmaker researching York adds that York is “forty years behind, so any step toward integration is positive, but it’s been on a small scale. York has made a little progress toward integration, but it’s not all happy and harmonious.” He adds that Saxton “wanted to make sure Alabama Public Television wouldn’t present the situation in York as rosy, as art breaks down racial boundaries, because York has a long way to go to achieve that.”
York does have a long way to go to achieve racial integration, but efforts by the art movement to increase black participation have been an important first step with tangible results. Riddick states that the Coleman Center “has made progress in racial integration.” She has “seen it change a tremendous amount since the Coleman Center opened,” pointing out that “blacks and whites now sit together on the front porch at Avenue A.” Blacks have also turned out in greater numbers for recent Coleman Center events, especially those involving local artists and youth, and have participated in community art projects. Importantly, blacks have also begun to take leadership roles in the art movement.
Increasing black participation in the arts in York has tapped holes in the barrier of cultural and social segregation between the black and white communities. Through working together on community projects, black and white have begun to disprove racial stereotypes, build trust, and set the stage for future collaboration. Importantly, the art movement has facilitated contact between black and white youth in York. This boosts the probability for future integration by breaking down and preventing stereotypes in youth, raising a generation accustomed to interracial contact, and setting the stage for integration of the schools. Residents involved in the art movement cite the need to continue promoting integration by seeking open and broad based participation, actively recruiting black residents and artists, and incorporating the black community’s unique assets and resources.
York has by no means conquered the challenges which threaten the viability of the art movement. Challenges in marketing, funding, leadership, and segregation remain. Especially in a town which has been racially, culturally, and socially segregated since its foundation over 150 years ago, progress comes slowly. But York has made important steps toward integration by seeking to create an interracial art movement which builds on York’s greatest asset: its people. This fledgling integration is critical to the success of the art movement, but more importantly, it is critical to the success of York in a changing South. As one local artist states, the movement is “the beginning of a change in direction of the community. Things are changing around here,” he says. “Slowly, but they’re changing.”
This study builds upon previous research by providing an updated look at racial segregation in the Black Belt. It not only documents segregation, but offers a detailed view of the effects of segregation on community members and on community development efforts. This research reveals that segregation causes the formation of two separate societies and cultures in the Black Belt, with little interaction between them. Segregation promotes ignorance and distrust between the black and white communities and emboldens racial stereotypes, precluding the establishment of friendships, trust, and a common identity needed for effective community development. Segregation also splits community resources and omits assets held by the minority group, a particularly devastating effect in the Black Belt where resources and assets are scarce. Segregation also heightens awareness of race which increases the likelihood that neutral events will be perceived as racist, further solidifying the separation between black and white.
On the surface, the Black Belt appears unaltered from the decades in which Scheper-Hughes, Greene, Stack, and Duncan conducted their research. Despite whites’ diminishing numbers, they still hold much of the power and resources throughout the region. The experiences of York citizens, however, offer a glimmer of hope in a long history of poverty and repression. This study reveals that though some in the Black Belt still hold tight to segregation, many others are ready for integration, and in fact view integration as necessary for their community’s survival. For most in York, segregation is not perpetuated by animosity, but by habit and a lack of knowledge about how to create something to replace it. Yet, though Black Belt citizens are often unsure of how to pursue integration and reticent to take a first step, they have embraced steps toward integration provided by outsiders.
Indeed, York’s art movement reveals the complex role outside leadership plays in community development. On one hand, outside leaders served as necessary catalysts and guides for creating a racially integrated art movement in York. Unconstrained by local social boundaries, recent Coleman Center directors worked with black and white community members without being rejected by either group, thus providing needed direction for York residents. The movement’s future success, however, depends on its local leaders. With a clear path set toward integration, the art movement now needs stability and continuity. Disruptions in leadership brought by the constant departure of outside leaders often cause losses in funding, resources, and momentum. Additionally, community development efforts must be locally driven and locally defined to ensure community control and to boost community members’ abilities and pride. York ultimately belongs to its citizens, and it is up to them to carry the mantle forward.
This study also evaluates York’s art movement in the context of rural tourism. Experiences in York confirm many tenets of rural tourism, including the need for marketing, regional collaboration, support of local government, and the creation of a tourism package. The art movement has also benefited from creating an organization to move efforts forward, strategic planning, and carrying out small, visible actions to boost credibility and community support. The art movement also validates the importance of involving youth in development efforts.
Broader than its definition as a rural tourism effort, York’s art movement is also a community development effort. In this context, experiences in York confirm the importance of several community development principles and show how they function in practice. The art movement in York validates the need for community development efforts based in equity, constructed from the bottom up, and sensitive to local populations. Community development efforts like York’s art movement must be locally defined and locally driven, achieve broad based participation, and seek to build the capacity of all citizens. Community development efforts should also grow local leadership and specifically seek out leaders from minority groups.
This study specifically contributes to a rising body of knowledge about the role of social capital in community development, especially when communities are racially, socially, and culturally divided. Currently, few studies address social capital within minority communities or the effect racial division has on the creation of social capital. Some studies recognize the challenges for divided communities attempting to revitalize, but few offer concrete steps toward unification. Scholars often tout bridging social capital as a necessary ingredient for community development without offering practical strategies for accomplishing it.
Though the strategies laid out in this research are by no means new to sociologists, they can serve to strengthen the existing evidence of the importance of addressing racial divisions in community development work. When attempting to revitalize communities with diverse populations, this study confirms the importance of creating a racially neutral space, involving youth, establishing projects in the physical space of the community and projects which demand community participation, using local experts, tailoring the project to fit community interests, growing local leaders, and designing a project which is naturally non-threatening and inclusive.
This study also emphasizes the role of cultural capital in community development, a concept rarely examined in sociological studies. This study acknowledges the alternate cultural capital created by the black community in part as a result of their exclusion from dominant, white cultural capital. It recognizes the defensive, resistant quality this capital can take in order to resist oppression by whites. In York, the existence of this distinctive capital poses a barrier to boosting black support for a traditionally white art movement. In order to bridge cultural capital between the black and white communities, specific strategies must be employed by leaders in the art movement, many of which overlap with strategies for bridging social capital and promoting integration.
Bridging cultural capital requires the establishment of a racially neutral space and the inclusion of black cultural assets. York’s art movement has created bridging cultural capital by featuring local black artists, tailoring art programs to fit the interests of the black community, and creating projects which unite black and white youth. In addition, I propose that creating a common identity among black and white community members is important in bridging cultural capital. This does not involve subordinating differences between groups, but rather embracing diversity while establishing a common theme under which all community members can identify. I believe invoking a common cultural identity to be as necessary as building trust in divided communities in breaking down barriers of difference.
This study thus continues the dialogue among sociologists and community development practitioners about how to unite disparate community groups through bridging social and cultural capital. It recognizes the very real place racial division claims in many Black Belt communities. By seeking to understand how racial divisions originated and operate in York today, this study is able to suggest solutions toward overcoming these divisions. Importantly, these solutions do not include community forums held to discuss the issue of race. They do not include protests or boycotts. These things certainly have their place and have historically acted as necessary tools for establishing equity in divided communities. But in York, where segregation is now sustained out of habit rather than hostility, non-aggressive community development strategies are needed. In York, integration comes most naturally through creating spaces in which black and white can interact in a peaceful, creative, and celebratory manner rather than by emphasizing the divisions between them.
Thus, this study also confirms the effectiveness of art as a tool for promoting equity and integration in divided communities. Art is something every community member can access and enjoy. In York, art provides a non-threatening, cohesive medium which invites community members to work together toward a common goal. York’s art movement has furthered integration by preventing and breaking down racial stereotypes and by building interracial friendships. It also provides a chance for black and white youth to develop a habit of cooperation, thus solidifying integration in the next generation. Finally, art provides a visual model of integration previously absent from the community.
In summary, this research provides a detailed look at one town’s struggle to overcome a divisive past through the arts. The community development tenets emphasized are relevant to communities across the South, and to diverse communities anywhere. In a changed economy, many rural communities are in the throes of reevaluating the status quo, changing directions, and implementing new ways to sustain themselves. In divided communities, these efforts must include strategies for promoting integration. This study aids communities in the transformation process by providing tools for creating diverse and equitable community movements.
CHAPTER FIVE
INTEGRATION IN YORK
Integration & Community Development
Scholars and York residents alike view integration as a crucial component of successful community development. Yet recent years have seen several failed attempts to integrate the races in York. In one instance, a black high school student tried to get an integrated youth group together to talk about race, but black and white parents shut it down before it could begin. On another occasion, a black minister preached, “We need to get all of us together. Christ isn’t going to have a white kingdom and a black kingdom. If we get there, we’re going to be together.” He told the story of the Good Samaritan, then stated that “We are all neighbors, and the Lord means for us to be together, both black and white, to be a neighbor to each other.” To this end, the preacher organized a sunrise service to pull the black and white communities together. The plan was for blacks to go to the white service one year and for whites to go to the black service the next year. The attempt failed, however, because “some black preachers told blacks to stay at the black churches and not to go to the white churches.”
In fact, in the history of York until 2001, I was only told of one instance in which blacks and whites came together. During World War II, one resident recalls, blacks and whites “got together in churches, singing and praying for the boys to come home. A drastic disaster has got to bring us together,” she states, adding that during this time, some residents still chose not to mix.
Some York residents, however, do not believe a drastic disaster is necessary for integration, and cite recent successes. One resident states that “in the past ten years, people have become more integrated in homes, and communities are becoming more diverse.” Another confirms that now “you see black and white living in the same neighborhoods” and another states that “there are more mixed marriages now.” One resident adds that “in some places, black and white work together and at the University [of West Alabama] they socialize together.” Though she points out that some students at the university still choose not to mix, “because their parents told them not to.” She believes “the younger generation will be somewhat different than the older generation” and “will work more closely together.”
Despite these advancements, however, integration in York is a work in progress. Several residents point out that even when spaces are integrated, a true mixing of the races does not necessarily exist. One resident states that she lives in an integrated community in West Alabama, “but the people don’t talk to us. In Birmingham,” she explains, “we were friends with our neighbors. Here we just live together and that’s it. We wave to each other.” Another states that “at integrated meetings, people flop to one side or the other. People want to be with their own kind.”
As a whole, York residents believe true integration takes time. One Alabama resident points out that interracial marriages are still new even in Birmingham. A York resident states, “You can’t change it overnight, it takes a long time before a change can be made.” Another adds that “bringing black and white together can’t be done with speed. It will be one [person] at a time and will require intense outside help.” Another resident believes that in the attempt to integrate, “we’ll disappoint each other a lot, but we’ll keep trying. Even in our struggles, we’re growing.”
York residents also recognize that not everyone will be convinced that integration is the answer. Horst states that at the Coleman Center, “it was hard to find projects all people would support, but over time,” she states, “integration becomes more natural.” Riddick adds that there will always be “a trickle of people that are racist. Certain people don’t want blacks to have the same as whites,” she states. “You can’t change people. You can only do what you can do and hope people see how much joy it can bring.”
Despite the slow pace toward integration, York residents stay the course because they believe integration is necessary for community growth. One resident states that “we’re still pretty separate in terms of culture. We have to get on the same page to make the art movement grow.” Another states that cosmetic changes in York “may help, but if you don’t change the culture, you don’t answer the deep-seeded stuff. York will only prosper through consensus.” A local business owner adds that in York, “We have to have each other to make it. We are in a community with no jobs. If we don’t rely on each other, we can’t exist.” A resident of York puts it another way: “We gotta get together some way or another, but how?”
Many in York answer this question by calling for cooperation between the black and white communities. The mayor states that unless the community comes together as one, “we’ll all die out. The only way to make it as a community,” she insists, “is if we work together.” A local business owner agrees York needs “to work together as a whole instead of the left arm going left and the right arm going right.” She states that “the community consists of both races, and until we come together as a community, York will not prosper.”
One resident points out that York “can’t draw people or industry without a good climate. We have to come together instead of being separate by race. This is the first step. It’s going to take all of us working together to make this county work or it will dry up. We have a lot of talented people. We just have to come together.” She believes York needs “a mixture of both cultures working together” and calls for “more whites working in the public sector so that people see it as integrated. The city council has two white members” she states, “but it should be 50/50.” The mayor of York agrees that the town “needs middle ground” with “white and black working together 50/50.”
A local business owner believes the races could come together through “town meetings where everyone can come out and express their opinions. There is no forum now for meetings,” he explains. “They’re only held if some issue comes up.” He adds that the races need to be inclusive of each other. For instance, “If the white girls are having tea, they need to invite the black girls, and if the black girls are having a barbecue, they need to invite the white girls. It’s about exchanging,” he states. “That’s the only way to have harmony.” This statement poignantly illustrates the lack of cultural exchange present in York today, with this resident picturing white girls sitting down to tea while black girls hold a barbecue.
Integrating the Schools
While residents have mentioned community forums and seeking a racial balance in government as strategies to promote integration in York, the strategy most often mentioned is integrating the schools. Upon researching segregated schools in Sumter County, Adams found that “when community loyalty is split in rural communities between public and private school systems, the social networks that may facilitate deliberation are limited or divided and the possibility for collective action diminishes” (Adams 2005:6-7).
York residents confirm Adams’ findings. One states, “I have no idea short of building a new school what will bring the community together. Mixed schools are the very first step. If black and white children go to school together, they can get along and be friends. It’s the first step in changing the community. Once students are forced together, parents are forced together.” Another resident believes York “should build a magnet school to attract all kids.” She asks, “How will we ever come together if someone doesn’t take that first step?” The current mayor of York adds that she “would like to see the school systems merge together” and the former mayor believes that “one of these days the schools will be integrated and Sumter County will have one high school” although “it might be 2050 or 2055” before it happens.
Interestingly, another resident in York suggests involving older whites in the public schools as a step toward integration. He states that "older whites don’t participate in public school functions, and they came up in that school. They need to be given opportunities to come back into the school system. No one ran them out. They chose to leave during civil rights years,
but that story’s got old. A lot of people graduated from there. They need to have a chance to reminisce about their school days. We need to invite white graduates back to join with them in harmony and understanding. To have appreciation days. That would clarify a lot of stuff."
Despite these positive statements, however, York residents are “mixed about integrating the schools.” When the new superintendent held focus groups on integrating the schools in York, the response was divided in half between those who wanted to integrate and those who did not. One resident explains that citizens of York “want better schools but don’t know how to do it, or even what it means.” She states that “lots of tension and deep wounds keep people from seeing integrated schools as a possibility” and that “people are afraid to initiate change. They wait for permission,” she explains, “for someone who has more authority to make the change.”
Integration in York’s Art Movement
As many in York believe schools should be integrated, many also believe in the need for an integrated art movement. In fact, York residents often view integration as vital to the movement’s success. Creating an integrated art movement in York demands increasing black participation, which residents believe would bring new leaders, new donors, and previously untapped knowledge, talent, connections, and resources. The black community’s own cultural capital, separate from white cultural capital, contains resources and talent unknown and unrecognized by white leaders. One resident states that Coleman Center shows featuring local black artists have revealed “a wealth of talented people I wasn’t aware of.” Thus, integration is crucial to the art movement because black participants can help to reclassify elements of black culture as assets, preventing black cultural assets from being overlooked, or worse, condemned.
In order to increase black involvement, residents believe the art movement must reach out specifically to the black community, especially due to the past perception of the Coleman Center as a white institution. As Servon states, perpetuating existing organizations which draw strength from certain kinds of identity potentially deepens existing cleavages that feed intolerance and maintain institutions which discriminate along the lines of gender, race, class, and ethnicity. These homogenous associations in heterogeneous societies may strengthen trust and cooperative norms within an ethnic group, but weaken trust and cooperation between groups (Servon 2003).
Thus, the success of the Coleman Center depends on its ability to recreate itself as a heterogeneous, interracial center. A local business owner states the Coleman Center “needs to make the black community feel welcome, to help them to know the art is for them.” An artist in residence believes the movement must “do outreach to the black community for the arts to succeed.” Another believes York needs a continual program to involve blacks in the arts, pointing out that it will take a lot of enrolling to get blacks to participate as traditionally they did not view the arts as open to them.
Some residents believe personal invitations to art events would help to increase black participation. A local business owner states that the Coleman Center “needs to make more of an effort to involve blacks,” pointing out that “it only takes a few minutes to extend a personal invitation.” She believes that if the Coleman Center extended personal invitations to black organizations, they “would be enthused to participate” and “it would help to get the black community involved in art in York.” Executive director Shana Berger agrees that the Coleman Center “needs to reach out specifically to the black community and let them know the doors are open. Lots of folks won’t come without an invite,” she states, “because it’s not a place they felt welcome in the past.”
Residents recognized the need to extend personal invitations to the black community in the Coleman Center’s early days as well. Founder Tut Riddick states that because a lot of people in York do not read the newspaper, she had five hundred cards printed announcing the Coleman Center’s opening and went to every post office in Sumter County to hand them out personally. “Just like a politician,” she says. As a result, five hundred people attended the opening, “but finding the manpower to communicate personally is a problem,” Riddick states. Thus, involving the black community was a priority at the Coleman Center’s inception, but the challenges of doing so and the subsequent years of part time directors left the task unfulfilled.
In recent years, the Coleman Center has again consciously attempted to reach the black community, and has met with some success. These efforts have helped to transform the Coleman Center’s identity into an integrated institution, leading to bigger turnouts at events and a changed perception among the black community. One resident calls the Coleman Center “the one progressive thing going on in York,” stating that “previously there was no understanding by the black community that the Coleman Center was something for them, but it has made real strides in involving the black community.” Another resident believes the Coleman Center has recently “gone further than it has before in terms of reaching out to the whole community.” A third resident states, “My perception of the Coleman Center was of little old ladies drinking tea, but now I see it as a growth mechanism for the county.”
Strategies for Increasing Black Participation and Promoting Integration
A Neutral Space
One York artist states that “one thing that brings people together most is a shared goal that all participants want to achieve. Art could be that goal. It could be a big step in bringing people together in York.” Indeed, the Coleman Center has brought people together through art, partly because it provided a neutral space in which the races could interact. Saxton states that “one thing we tried to do was create the Coleman Center as a place that was racially ‘neutral’- meaning that no matter what race you were, you would know that the Coleman Center was welcoming to you.”
Horst adds that many of its members wanted the Coleman Center to be integrated upon her arrival in 2003, but did not know how to go about it because there are no integrated organizations in the area to serve as examples. She states that “Coleman Center members were liberal minded and open to change. They did not impose segregation [at the Coleman Center], but they didn’t know how to incorporate the entire community because there is no example of an organization that’s integrated in the area. They needed advice about what steps to take. Lots of people want to work together, they don’t want to be segregated, but they don’t know how. People on both sides don’t really know what to do.”
Thus, the new directors provided the leadership necessary to promote integration at the Coleman Center. Horst states that “the Coleman Center is in a position to serve as a unifying force in the community, as a neutral ground where everyone comes together. The Coleman Center gave [York residents] an opportunity for mixing.” One resident calls the Coleman Center the “one thing that brought different segments of society together,” and that it “became the center for mixing the races.” Another adds that in York, “things have been segregated, the community has been completely divided, but the Coleman Center has been able to pull the races together and give some diversity to the arts in this area.” To illustrate the diversity at the Coleman Center, Horst describes a project by artist in residence Stuart Hyatt. Hyatt lived in York for four weeks listening to as much live music as he could, then wrote eight songs inspired by what he had heard and recorded eighty eight people in the community singing them. “At the opening,” Horst states, “it was the first time a lot of people had been in the same room together. It was a Sumter County harmony moment.”
The interracial contact afforded by the establishment of a racially neutral space in York has helped to diminish the gulf of ignorance between the black and white communities and replace it with friendship and trust. After dining at a white resident's house, a black resident remarked, “We’ve never had dinner at a white person’s house before. You eat just like we do!” Indeed, research in the Black Belt community of Uniontown, Alabama, confirms that as blacks and whites “focus on the interests they have in common” through community development efforts, “the differences between them begin to seem smaller…Relationships are being established across the issue of race, not by dealing with the issue explicitly or talking about racial barriers or how to overcome them. Rather, trust is developing as black and white citizens work together on projects to bring about community improvements” (Sumners 2005:14). Likewise in York, one artist states that simply working together in the arts district and on Coleman Center projects has brought black and white together. An art project in the schools, for example, allowed white volunteers to relate to black youth and showed black youth that they are cared about by white residents.
Interracial contact also creates a desire and a momentum for further contact. After participating in an arts project at a black school, a white youth expressed interest in becoming a reading tutor at the school. “So it opens those doors,” states a local artist. She believes it is important that art projects continue to be integrated, because in Sumter County “there aren’t a lot of chances for kids of different races to relate to each other. When they go to college, that may be the first time they’ve sat in a classroom with someone of another race. There needs to be more understanding between the races earlier [in life].” Fortunately, the art movement in York has taken a step toward generating that understanding.
Targeting Youth
Many in York believe targeting youth is an effective way to boost black participation in the art movement. A local business owner suggests setting up “neighborhood art projects so youth can access art in their own streets.” Many residents believe getting schools involved in the arts is critical. Berger and Purath agree that educational programming is a good direction for Coleman Center to go and have begun working with youth in schools. They also hope to attract school field trips to the Coleman Center gallery.
Artists have already experienced success in programs targeting youth. Streetscapes 2004 was a collaborative effort between the Coleman Center and downtown artists which invited local youth to participate in a free mosaic workshop (see Appendix 2, Figure 6). The project was staffed with volunteers who taught youth about abstract art and science by enlarging images of indigenous trees (pecan, white oak, and silver maple) to create images of cellular structure which resembled abstract art. The patterns were then transferred onto concrete slabs and thirty participating black and white youth learned to cut glass and create mosaics during a two-week workshop. The mosaics were installed in sections of damaged city sidewalks in York, next to examples of the trees they represent.
The Coleman Center and downtown artists also collaborated in Your Art Here, a project intended to raise youth awareness of the arts (see Appendix 2, Figure 7). Fifth and sixth graders at both public and private schools were instructed to draw about their community. The drawings were then collaged, enlarged, and featured on three billboards around town. One of the billboards sits at the back of a vacant lot across from an artist’s shop, and she has watched kids pass by it, proudly showing their parents their work. Another billboard sits atop the York police station, where officers report increased traffic congestion due to drivers slowing down to look.
In addition, New Outlooks was a project involving eleven local youth who attended photography classes at the Coleman Center for five weeks during the summer of 2006. Berger states that the group consisted of ten black students and one white who participated in a range of activities “focused on composition and self-expression” with the purpose of creating “a space for their vision within the community.” At the end of the project, students’ work was featured on billboards in York, Livingston, and in the Coleman Center gallery, where blacks and whites alike attended the opening.
In fact, youth programming was used as a strategy for increasing black participation in the Coleman Center’s early days as well. Founder Tut Riddick relates the following anecdote as illustration:
"A few years after the Coleman Center opened, we had an art demonstration at the Sumter County High School and the
condition of the school was so bad, it was like we were furnishing cake when they didn’t even have bread. I said the best
thing we can do is not another program at the Coleman Center, but to paint the school hallways. Some whites didn’t want to give money to fix black schools. One friend told me I was ruining myself in York for getting involved. I told her I didn’t want to belong to the country club anyway. And I said, ‘You mean they won’t take my money at the grocery store? So kids came to Altman Corner (on Avenue A) to talk about colors. Since the halls were so dark, we painted the lower halves denim blue and the upper halves glossy white. Then on the railing we had a green segment that led to a green door, a purple segment that led to a purple door, etc. We gave the plan to the teacher and he said, ‘What is this?’ but he had no choice. The school was totally organized before we got there and we painted the whole school, then we collected posters from friends and put them on the walls. Then the basketball team raised money to paint the gym. Someone brought us watermelons in the cafeteria. They supported us completely. It’s just having the guts and the courage to do it."
Youth programming is a key strategy for building an interracial art movement because it helps to prevent youth from developing racial stereotypes. One artist states that “hopefully the kids don’t have preset notions about race yet” so that integrated community art projects can prevent those stereotypes from ever developing and break down stereotypes already in place. Further, many in York believe the path to integration is through youth and the schools. Thus, one of the strongest powers of art in York is its ability to provide contact and opportunities for building interracial relationships between youth who have no other forum in which to do so. The mayor states that “if art is integrated, people will start asking, ‘What else can we do? What can we do to pull kids together?” Purath adds that “if the community has places that are integrated, we’ll get closer to thinking our kids could go to school together.”
Youth programming also increases black participation by drawing in adults. A Coleman Center board member states that when the Coleman Center “goes into schools, the parents of the kids who participate become interested and it brings them to the Coleman Center.” She believes the Coleman Center needs “to have more exhibits where students have participated in the art” because it gets their parents to come. “In order to get to the community,” she states, “we have to get to the parents and children.” A local business owner calls it “a good step that the Coleman Center went into public schools. When the students come,” she states, “the parents follow.” A local resident confirms that “if you get children motivated, parents will come out. And if you get families, then you get the community.”
Berger agrees that “contact with the community happens through youth programming.” She explains that “people really connected to Your Art Here because they had a personal tie to it.” At the opening, several people made comments like “My grandson did that” or “I know someone who goes to school there.” Adults were willing to approach her, Berger says, because their children knew her through the project. Indeed, York residents cite youth projects as a major reason the black community has begun to participate in the art movement.
Community Projects
Former Coleman Center director Amy Horst states that “the most eye-opening and moving thing was when artists in residence were in York doing projects that engaged the community.” Thus, in addition to creating youth projects, the art movement has also reached out to the black community by creating projects in downtown York. One local artist states that the “community won’t come to you, you have to go to the community” and Berger and Purath have pledged to “do more outside the Coleman Center walls.” Former directors Horst and Saxton accomplished this by recruiting artists in residence to create public art. One resident explains that “you used to have to come into the gallery, but all of a sudden art was on billboards, benches, sidewalks, sculptures in Cherokee Park. The art got out in front of people.” A Coleman Center board member adds that the “greater emphasis on public art and community art needs to expand even further.”
The Coleman Center also sponsors a yearly festival called Rooster Day in which local black artists offer free art classes to residents. One resident called the festival “a good community motivator,” stating that afterwards “people who didn’t come said they heard it was so nice that they would come next year.” A local business owner agrees that Rooster Day “brought out lots of people” and believes more festivals in York would increase integration. He believes “all the businesses need to get together and come up with something to benefit the city, and have all the city people understand we’re working with them. At least once a year,” he states, “we need to have an event with rides, food, and clean entertainment. York will come out for these events.”
Coleman Center directors Berger and Purath maintain the emphasis on community art by continuing to recruit artists in residence to create public art in York and by designing community art projects. Their Community Memory Map consisted of two large abstracted maps of York which residents filled in with memories, photographs, drawings, stories, poems, and collages (see Appendix 2, Figure 8). The project’s intention was “to bring together all community members in the common goal of reflecting on the past to juxtapose individual perceptions with collective identity” (“Coleman Center” 2006). In other words, to create bridging cultural capital between the black and white communities by uniting them under a common identity. In fact, all of the community and youth oriented projects at the Coleman Center have encouraged black and white residents to discover common cultural ground and to develop friendships and trust. Thus, we see the creation of bridging social and cultural capital so vital to community development efforts.
Local Artists
The art movement in York has also boosted black participation by featuring the work of local black artists. Berger states that “if people have a connection to the artist, when they come they’ll have a good experience and will think about coming back.” She cites one of her goals as building “innovative programming that directly involves the community. In the past,” she explains, “when local clubs have exhibited artwork and crafts at the Coleman Center, it really helped to draw in the community because it was local art.” A local artist agrees that the Coleman Center should “let the public know they can put in some of their work. That would draw more people to participate, and their families and friends would come to support them.” When the Coleman Center sponsored a poetry reading by a black York resident, it drew more members of the black community than ever before. “It was wall to wall people,” the poet states. A resident adds that “blacks and whites of all ages and all levels of education came.”
Type of Art
In order to connect with the black community, several York residents believe the art movement must employ types of art of interest to the community. One local business owner believes “getting more input from the public about what kinds of programs the community wants would help to get more blacks involved.” Indeed, by asking the black community about the art they produce and prefer, the art movement can include more of the cultural attributes in the area, boosting the power of the movement as a whole. Just as some whites failed to catalog a local black business as an asset, they may also lack knowledge about art assets in the black community.
Some in York suggest that the traditionally low turnout at Coleman Center events is due to the black community’s limited interest in the type of art shown. An artist in residence explains that under former directors, "the exhibits were contemporary artists which people don’t understand. Four people showed up at a contemporary art opening, but when a local artist from Demopolis opened, 150 people showed up. I see no problem with contemporary art, but it should be limited to two shows per year and the artist should have a connection to the state. Sumter County isn’t the audience for contemporary art. The audience needs to be educated about art in the first place, because contemporary art is often conceptual and has more to do with the story than the object. How are you going to put seven Pepsi cans in a gallery when people will say, ‘I just saw seven Pepsi cans in the street?’
A local business owner agrees that “some people didn’t like the contemporary, conceptual work. They said, ‘This isn’t art.’ You can’t do solely that type of work. You have to be aware of your audience and what they understand and appreciate.” Purath adds that “it’s hard to get new people interested in art. In any community there’s a stigma, an air of pretentiousness. They think it’s not for them, they’re not smart enough to understand, so you have to think of other ways to connect.”
One artist in residence agrees there is a disconnect between contemporary art exhibits at the Coleman Center and the type of art of interest to the black community. He states that blacks primarily access art through performance and music. “Music is a major folk tradition in West Alabama,” he states, and “performance poetry also has deep roots in the recitation traditions occurring in black churches.” Thus, he believes music and poetry programming could attract the black community to the Coleman Center. In fact, he attributes the recent high attendance at a poetry reading not only to the fact that the poet was black, but to the fact that poetry has strong black roots. Berger agrees that York residents are “more into music, poetry, and crafts” and adds that exhibits of local work were well-attended because they featured crochet and quilting, which are popular in the area. She also agrees that tailoring the type of art shown at the Coleman Center to fit community interest would draw in more members of the black community.
Importantly, residents who advocate designing art programming to match local tastes do not believe that West Alabama residents are incapable of comprehending or appreciating conceptual and contemporary art. The artist quoted above suggests that “poetry could be an in for the black community as far as interacting with the Coleman Center, and through patience and time, there would be an appreciation of visual art as well.” A local business owner agrees the “appreciation of art will build over time as the Coleman Center audience changes.”
Catalysts & Champions
Community developer Vaughn Grisham states that the community development process begins with individuals he calls “catalysts” who seek to improve the community. These catalysts get together with other like minded individuals whom Grisham calls “champions,” and a community development effort is born (Grisham 2005). Though communities cannot directly create catalysts and champions, their presence is key to successful community development efforts. York has benefited from several of these leaders, whose combined presence created momentum and “a buzz in York about the arts.”
Tut Riddick, founder of the Coleman Center, was the catalyst in York. Many residents believe art in York would have never flourished, or have even begun, without Riddick’s vision and dedication. Further, one Alabama resident calls her “instrumental in bridging the black/white divide.” Riddick created, for example, the Coleman Center sponsored Rooster Day at which black artists offered free art classes to the community. Indeed, Riddick did not seem confined by the traditional structure of York. She was a member of the white elite, to be sure. Hers was one of the town’s founding families. Yet she rejected the loftiness her position afforded her, stating, “I didn’t want to belong to the country club anyway,” and instead used her power and status to create something for the entire community. In fact, Riddick believes that “if an art gallery doesn’t affect the life of the community, it’s failing.” The Coleman Center’s current director agrees that the goal of art is to “transform society. As artists, you couldn’t think of a better mission,” she states. “I think it’s the responsibility of artists to have goals like that. Tut believed that. It’s the mission of the Coleman Center.”
Several artists have acted as champions for the art movement and integration in York, building on the foundation Riddick set. One resident states that the “same people attended all the [Coleman Center] functions” until Amos Kennedy arrived in 2002. A local artist believes that because Kennedy is black, he has helped blacks to feel more welcome in the art movement and has “helped blacks and whites understand each other better.” Indeed, one black resident states that he only knows of the Coleman Center because he made friends with Kennedy. Marilyn Gordon, director of Black Belt Designs, is another often cited champion for black participation in the arts, especially because she introduced the women attending her sewing workshops to the Coleman Center. Both Kennedy and Gordon are credited with getting local youth interested in their crafts and producing work which “is all about embracing the larger community, breaking down invisible barriers and color lines.” Mary Zeno, a local black poet, is also viewed as essential to the movement after her first reading at the Coleman Center drew more than fifty members of the black community to the Coleman Center for the first time in history.
The mayor of York has championed the art movement as well. Residents call Mayor Carolyn Gosa “totally supportive,” “embracing of the arts,” and “very active and energetic.” One resident states that the mayor “is so supportive of anything and everything we do. If we come up with an outlandish plan, she’ll find a way to make it happen.” Another adds that “Mayor Gosa is really involved. Whatever the Coleman Center wants to do, she asks what the City of York can do. The mayor was instrumental in getting new board members and in shaping the mission of the Coleman Center.” Another states that there is “lots of cooperation between Mayor Gosa and the Coleman Center,” and believes this city leadership has been crucial to the art movement’s success. A West Alabama resident agrees, calling it “interesting and promising that local government has gotten behind the art initiative.”
The mayor specifically aided the art movement by boosting the involvement of the black community. Horst states that the mayor was “key to pulling the community in.” An Alabama resident researching York views the mayor as a “progressive and intelligent” person who “desires to see beyond color.” Indeed, Mayor Gosa cites one of her goals as changing the perception of the Coleman Center “as a white thing. I wanted to be the person to unite the city,” she states. “I told the black community, ‘They’re having all these shows, let’s go!’ And the more the black community went, the more they enjoyed it and talked about promoting it. When I brought the black community to the Coleman Center, things started happening. Now they knew they could come; now they felt a part of it.” Mayor Gosa calls the Coleman Center “the right idea at the wrong time. It took until 2001 for it to take off,” she explains. “It works now because I’m a black female and I can draw both sides. I’m part of the newer generation. I can bring [the races] together.”
Former Coleman Center directors Horst and Saxton are key champions of the art movement, and are often credited with increasing black participation. A local artist states that Horst and Saxton positively influenced the racial inclusiveness of art in the community. Speaking of Horst and Saxton, an Alabama resident adds that it only “took a few people inviting blacks in and making them feel safe and wanted” to increase black participation in the arts.
Horst and Saxton boosted black participation through direct, purposeful efforts. The Municipal Workshop, for example, strengthened the Coleman Center’s relationship with city government. Because public works, the city council, and the mayor are all black, this stronger connection to the city helped link the Coleman Center to the rest of the black community. As artistic director, Saxton states his goal was “to transform the Coleman Center from a place of private activity to one of community involvement.” His success in this venture is confirmed by a resident who cites Saxton’s program, and states that in the past five years, the Coleman Center “directors have become more involved in bringing the whole community in.”
Horst and Saxton also encouraged black participation by actively seeking black members for the Coleman Center board. Saxton states that the “board has increased in size and the racial makeup is beginning to be more reflective of the community.” Another board member adds that there is a “pretty good mix of races on the board. When I came in 2002, there were only two blacks, but now it’s a little more diverse.” Horst adds that in addition to being represented in larger numbers, blacks now occupy higher positions on the board. The subsequent Coleman Center directors continued to recruit blacks to the board, and by the summer of 2006, the board consisted of 6 blacks, 4 whites, and one Native American.
The increased involvement of blacks on the Coleman Center board reflects an important tenet of community development: diverse leadership. In fact, Gittel emphasizes the need to specifically involve leaders from the dominated group (Gittell 2003). Directors’ actions to increase the number and rank of blacks on the Coleman Center board helps to legitimate the Coleman Center in the eyes of the black community and boost support for the art movement. Growing local leaders also aids both continuity in and commitment to the movement.
Growing Local Leaders
Many of the changes in York over the past five years were sparked by outsiders. Horst and Saxton’s ability to rally the black community is often attributed to their outsider status. A local artist explains that the directors “were able to make a lot of black friends” because they did not possess “a southern white York perspective where you always controlled everything. You could just say yes or no to them. Not yes ma’am and no ma’am.” An Alabama resident agrees, stating that because the directors “didn’t grow up in the Deep South, they automatically invited black people to events. They got out and made friends with the black community, invited them to their house. So the black community felt welcome and wanted and treated as equals.”
Horst concurs that “being from the outside helped a lot. Both cultures were completely foreign to us,” she explains. “We weren’t in either, or perceived as belonging to either group.” In fact, despite being white themselves, Horst states that she and Saxton “were more accepted by blacks than by whites.” Current Coleman Center directors Berger and Purath also cite outsider advantages. They too are from the Midwest, as Horst and Saxton were, and believe “a sense of ‘They’re Yankees, they didn’t know any better’” exists in York, allowing them to “cross social lines and get away with it without judgment. Though it is a fine line,” they state.
These outside leaders played a critical role in promoting integration in York. Just as some local residents hesitate to take steps toward integrating schools, waiting “for someone who has more authority to make the change,” some also hesitate to take steps toward building an integrated art movement. Their reticence is due to several factors, including a lack of knowledge about how to pursue integration, a dearth of integrated organizations in the area to serve as models, and a reluctance to cross longtime racial barriers. A local business owner explains, “You can have a successful organization as a white person, but if you want it to be community wide, you’ll lose some white support.” An artist in residence adds that the art movement’s “challenge is to overcome small town thinking. Every small town has its forces that keep it a small town,” he explains. And York is no different.” Riddick agrees, stating that “in small towns, people are very influenced by what others think.” Whenever she did something controversial at the Coleman Center, Riddick states, people “were glad I came in and said ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ Then they could say, ‘Tut said to do it’ and I’d be off to Mobile.”
Thus, leaders from outside York were needed to set a path toward integration. It is up to local leaders, however, to build upon their efforts. Successful community development requires locally driven, locally defined efforts so that the community can control its fate. In addition, outside leaders cannot provide the continuity and longevity necessary for successful development. A West Alabama resident states that changing Coleman Center directors often is “a problem for long-term development,” pointing out that both couples who have served as directors will move on from York. She believes the town “needs to grow local leadership and talent to continue growing the program, for the vision to be maintained.”
In addition, Horst and Saxton’s outsider status also had some negative consequences for the movement. A disadvantage of being outsiders, a local artist in residence explains, was that Horst and Saxton simply did not know people in the community when they arrived. The former Coleman Center director used to “call people before the exhibitions and get them to come, but [Horst and Saxton] didn’t have that advantage.” Horst and Saxton’s lack of knowledge of local groups like the Friends of the Coleman Center also resulted in a loss of critical financial support. There was also some level of mistrust of Horst and Saxton due to their outsider status. One resident explains that Saxton “didn’t pay attention to the way things go down here socially, and some people found that threatening.” Another states that upon Horst’s departure, “she offered to find someone to take her place, but someone on the Coleman Center board said, ‘Why would we want to do that? It would just be more damn Yankees.’”
The cultural gap between the new directors and the older members of the Coleman Center board fueled dissension over which direction the Coleman Center should take. The following quotes illustrate the views of three local residents.
"Tension eventually developed because their visions didn’t coincide anymore. The old members of the board and Riddick felt like this isn’t what the Coleman Center used to be. They felt their ideas and visions didn’t have any weight, that they’d lost some control. All the older crowd was wealthy and here were these young Yankee people telling them they weren’t going to do things their way anymore. The old crowd was used to being able to get their friends shows. They felt like the message was that shows of local people weren’t good enough anymore, and they felt that people don’t want to see art they don’t understand."
"Leadership problems occurred when Horst came in as director of the Coleman Center because she didn’t understand the situation of York. There were several older white people on the board who’d been there a long time and had a traditional Southern background. Young folks have to realize that these habits and culture can’t change overnight. Horst got new members on the board and poisoned the well against the older members. Now they have a bunch of new members that can’t support the Coleman Center financially."
"Little old ladies have a different opinion about what kind of art needs to be showcased. They don’t want anything too radical or extreme. Some [older board members] have died, some have moved on, and some it would be better if they left, but some have influence in terms of funding. The new members are open to anything, as long as it’s not distasteful or disrespectful."
Following Horst and Saxton’s departure, the current Coleman Center director states that “tensions that had been under the surface blew wide open. It was tough for everyone. People had been upset but it had been under the surface. It was a result of a lack of direct communication, gossip getting out of hand, making things big. It undermines people’s trust in each other.” One artist attributes the tension to a “small town mentality” which “undermines efforts to bring people together. Gossip has a high currency,” she explains. “Things get blown out of proportion and grudges are held a long time.” In fact, the tension was so severe that the Alabama State Council on the Arts stepped in to assist in the transition from Horst and Saxton to the new directors.
This dissension did cause some major shifts on the Coleman Center board. An artist in residence states that “the board is changing. Many of the old guard have left because they served for so long and got tired. Four have resigned. [Horst] redid the bylaws and some took that as an opportunity to leave.” In 2005, one board member explains, the Coleman Center was still in the process of reorganizing. Riddick was involved less and the chairman of the board had resigned after twenty years of service. The longtime treasurer had recently died, and new directors had come on board in July.
Despite the upheaval, several of those in the art movement do not view the divisions as insurmountable. A documentary filmmaker researching York sees the differences among leaders as a natural part of growth, stating that “people start something and feel ownership of it, then get upset when others take it over. These are natural growing pains that have been happening in York lately. Now they’re having problems about whose name is on this, who takes credit. He said, she said stuff.” A former York resident agrees, stating that the “Coleman Center has the potential for doing a lot, if it had leadership, but now the leaders are just fussing at each other. They need to get their act together and start promoting the town.” Riddick adds that “people get their feelings hurt and I’m upfront, I’ve hurt some feelings, but we’re all working for the good of the group. We’ve all made mistakes, but grudges weigh you down too much. As a group matures, more and more good stuff will come out of it.”
Berger adds that Riddick’s vision of “artists teaching and people taking classes [in York] is not that different from the vision of the new board members. The visions could come back together again.” She cites one of her major goals as director as “bringing everyone with an interest back together and really moving ahead, moving forward. People are starting to come back together,” she says. “We’re hoping we can bring everyone back on board.”
To unite the divided members of the art movement, several York residents cite the need for strong leadership and clear goals. A former resident believes York needs to develop new leadership, and hopes leaders will emerge from the new generation. She adds that leadership also needs to come from “city government and the Coleman Center. It takes a plan and someone to execute the plan.” Growing local leaders is thus necessary to provide the stability, continuity, and determination needed to continue moving toward integration.
Art Itself
Art can promote integration through its inherent functions and qualities which break down barriers. Riddick views art as a “bridge capable of pulling people together.” A regional development agency outside of York agrees that “the arts touch people on a personal, emotional level and have the power to rebuild the fabric of the community where it has been torn apart by years of poverty and struggle. The arts can construct bridges across barriers of class, race, gender, and age. The arts can interpret and celebrate the past, present, and future of a community to replace despair and apathy with hope and creation” (Phillips 2004:114).
Celia Carey, currently filming a documentary about York for Alabama Public Television, states that “the thing that struck me [about York], the bigger story, was that in a town in the Black Belt, which is 78% black, this was the first time blacks had socialized with whites. This project crossed social lines in ways other activities hadn’t in decades. I wondered, ‘What it is about art that makes it a bridge?’”
York residents have several responses to Carey’s question. First, they believe art is accessible to everyone. Horst states that “no one owns art. Everyone can access it.” A Coleman Center board member believes the arts have aided integration because they are something everyone can enjoy. He states that “art activities help the community come together [because] art overcomes racial boundaries. People like music whether they’re white or black.” Riddick cites art’s inherent neutrality as an aid to integration. “You can talk about quilts, pottery, or printing without getting people’s back up,” she explains.
Art also fosters integration by producing a visual model of racial integration. By including white students from the private academy and black students from the public schools, the Your Art Here project blended the students’ drawings to create a racially integrated vision of York. In addition, some of the artists who work in York create art which “is all about embracing the larger community, breaking down invisible barriers and color lines.”
Thus, art in York can provide residents with new visions and ideas. Carey states that artists “show others a different way of seeing the world; their vision helps us broaden our horizons.” A Coleman Center board member adds that the meaning of “art is to provoke.” Saxton offers a summarizing statement:
"From school on into adulthood, most of the population [in York] remains segregated. Of course, it is not a forced segregation—it is a choice, and mostly people choose that way because they have never been given any other options. This is where I think the arts can play a role in helping with the race issue. Bringing artists into the community who are somewhat ‘alien’ immediately presents someone who is totally different than what the norm is in York. And I think artists, in the end ‘make things’ that are somehow telling of our world—so giving the citizens of York the opportunity to view works by these artists, also gives them new ideas and hopefully, new choices."
CHAPTER FOUR
SEGREGATION
Bridging social and cultural capital and promoting equity are required for community revitalization. In York, however, the black and white communities often exist in separate worlds with little interaction, trust, or shared identity between them. In order to discover ways to fuse these worlds, we must first understand the nature of social and cultural segregation in York. This chapter takes an historical and modern look at segregation and inequality in the Black Belt, in York, and in the York art movement in hopes of discovering strategies to create bridging capital between the black and white communities.
The Black Belt
The southern Black Belt is a region of 1000 miles that sweeps from Virginia to Mississippi and includes 200 contiguous counties. The Black Belt takes its name from its dark, highly fertile soil which inspired a slave trade and established a region of black people who remain in the area today. The term is now used to refer to counties in which the black population outnumbers the white. Today, the Black Belt holds the largest black population in the country (Wimberley & Morris 1996). Of the 30 million African Americans living in the U.S. in 2000, half of them called the Black Belt home (“Black Belt”).
The Black Belt has a long history of economic depression and is continually plagued by high poverty rates and inadequate schools. In fact, the term “Black Belt” has become synonymous with a lack of basic health care, adequate housing, and educational opportunities (“Black Belt”). The Black Belt has been labeled as a region of persistent poverty, unalleviated by economic programs (Wimberley & Morris 1996). In the 1990’s, population and job growth were lower in the Black Belt than in the rest of the South, and unemployment rates were well above the national average. In 2000, the average poverty rate in the Black Belt was 22%, compared to a national average of 13% (Gibbs 2003).
Alabama’s Black Belt, which spans the midsection of the state, holds many of the poorest counties in the U.S. Representative Artur Davis has called the Black Belt “a statistical anchor on the state of Alabama,” pointing out that if you remove the Black Belt from Alabama, the state moves to number seven in the nation in productivity, number eleven in the creation of new jobs, and number twelve in healthcare (“Black Belt”). Current residents confirm the dismal condition of the Black Belt. One states that there is “not much hope in the Black Belt” and another believes “the whole Black Belt needs some kind of injection.”
Segregation
Since cotton was introduced in the late 1700’s, a system of inequality has reigned in the Black Belt. 75% of Alabama’s slaves were located in the Black Belt, controlled by plantation owners who grew rich and powerful throughout the 1800’s. As is well known, a small number of white plantation owners controlled all of the wealth and the slaves in the region. In 1847, the state capital was moved from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery, the heart of the Black Belt, and wealthy plantation owners gained increasing power over many aspects of Alabama culture (“Black Belt”).
Sumter County, in which this study takes place, embodies the character of the Black Belt. In 1860, the average number of slaves per household in Alabama was 4.5, and in Sumter County it was 16, the third highest of any county in the state (Boyd 1931). Alabama historian Virginia Hamilton discovered lyrics in Alabama Slave Narratives which read, “Bred an’ bawn in Sumter County, wore out in Sumter County, ‘specks to die in Sumter County, an’ whut is I got? Ain’t got nothin’, ain’t got nothin’, ain’t got nothin’” (Hamilton 1984:70).
1865 marked the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery, but not the end of control by white, wealthy landowners. As historians explain, though “externals changed, the old verities and the old arrangements stayed the same. Alabama accepted the war’s political verdict but rejected its social judgment. It built a postbellum society in the incredible likeness of what had gone before. It did not accept the idea or the law that blacks were free and equal and independent citizens” (Rogers, Ward, Atkins, Flynt 1994:226).
Whites retained their control over free blacks by “political chicanery, economic intimidation, and physical violence. They allowed black voters to continue on the rolls, but in many places manipulated their votes on behalf of white planter interests, especially in the Black Belt. Periodically whites lynched blacks to punish them for heinous crimes, real or imagined, to liquidate their most independent and strong-minded political leaders, or to stifle their economic, social, and educational aspirations” (Flynt 2004:318).
Hamilton explains the “old midnight fear that slaves were ‘rising’ gave way to apprehension that armed freedmen would ravish the countryside. In response, the Klan terrorized and flogged untold numbers of ex-slaves” (1984:84). Violence was “an instrument of policy” in Reconstruction Alabama (Flynt 2004:318). Secret societies flourished, leading one historian to dub Alabama the “most Klan-ridden state” in the South in 1869 and 1870 (Hamilton 1984:84). In the 1890’s, “Alabama’s lynchings led the nation,” occurring disproportionately in Black Belt counties (Flynt 2004:318) where most black voters lived (Hamilton 1986).
Sumter County, well known for its Klan outrages, was no exception (“Reconstruction” 1959). Klan members in Sumter County targeted both blacks and whites supportive of black rights. Hamilton states that “white republican candidates feared for their lives when speaking in Sumter or Greene County, because Klansmen whipped and shot whites as well as blacks” (1986:222). “Klansmen in ‘bloody Sumter,’” she explains, “conducted a sustained reign of terror, whipping blacks in daylight and murdering, along with several blacks, a white lawyer from New York who had been politically active among black voters.” She quotes an agent of the Justice Department assigned to Alabama during Reconstruction who sent back word that “he had rather be in the heart of Comanche country than in Sumter County without soldiers” (1984:84).
In addition to voter manipulation and violence, whites maintained control over blacks by retaining the plantation system. This system simply emerged in a new form as sharecropping, with landowners clinging to the soil as the source of wealth behind their political power (“Black Belt”). Historians explain that “the form and nature of Alabama’s agricultural system… determined the distribution of wealth, decided the status of rich and poor, [and] apportioned power and influence” (Rogers, Ward, Atkins, Flynt 1994:269).
Through sharecropping whites retained control over black laborers, who were “no less dependent economically” on the landowners than during slavery and who were locked into a world of “rural isolation.” A black tenant farmer in Hale County in the 1930’s remembers, “There was no place to go to be segregated out of, ‘cause you couldn’t get away.” Sharecropping communities “contained more than fifty percent rates of child poverty, double-digit unemployment, and median incomes half to three-fourths of the national average. Poor health, lack of hospitals and physicians, underfunded schools, and low test scores conspired to make the former plantation belt, once America’s richest land, its poorest” (Flynt 2004:319-20).
The land itself also suffered under sharecropping, as rising absentee landownership yielded tenant farmers who exploited the land and made no effort at conservation. The soil eroded until only inches remained above the level of chalk. At this time, the center of Alabama shifted to industry in Birmingham, which became known as “The New South” (“Black Belt”). Much of the region’s black population left for industrial jobs in Birmingham and other urban areas (Gibbs 2003). The Black Belt, which had been the richest, most productive, and most populous part of Alabama began a steady decline (“Black Belt”).
In the second half of the 20th century, opportunities in the Black Belt became increasingly limited. Cotton harvesting was mechanized causing labor demand to plummet while “outmigration rose sharply- between 1945 and 1965, the southern farm population fell from 16 million to 5 million” (Gibbs 2003:258). In addition, during the 1960’s, the government began to encourage planting pine on the idle acres of farmland, and the region became home to pulp and paper mills. Many small farmers lost their land to large tracts of pine, catfish farms, or hunting camps (“Black Belt”).
Thus a new system of power emerged which mirrored the old, in which most of the land was owned by a few white, wealthy landowners who often lived outside the region (“Black Belt”). Conditions during this time, after the civil rights movement, had improved only marginally for blacks. As Flynt states, “racism persisted long after Jim Crow was knocked off its perch” (Flynt 2004:358). Blacks were often prevented from advancing in the workplace and sometimes taught white workers job skills they were not allowed to perform themselves. White Alabama churches, sororities, fraternities, and country clubs were highly resistant to accepting blacks, and many remain segregated to this day (Flynt 2004). In addition, throughout the Black Belt, whites pulled their children out of public schools upon the federal desegregation ruling and enrolled them in private all-white academies, creating de facto segregation which still exists throughout much of the region. Thus, blacks still lived in a system operated by whites, who controlled wealth and resources in the Black Belt.
A civil rights worker who visited Gee’s Bend, Alabama in the 1960’s witnessed this disproportion of wealth and power firsthand. She stated that the population was “living for parts of the year on the edge of starvation and largely dependent on capricious federal farm programs,” calling Gee’s Bend “the portrait of the third world.” She attributed the poverty to landowner corruption: “a clear pattern of white landowners intercepting the government subsidy checks belonging to their tenants and extracting forced labor from the cheated farmers in exchange for food at the company store.” She called the situation in Gee’s Bend “a white conspiracy,” in which blacks’ own government was used against them (Scheper-Hughes 2003:16).
In her book, Call to Home, Carol Stack agrees that even after civil rights and voting rights came to the Black Belt, “the whites still owned just about everything and managed to control just about everything else” (1996:5-6). In her 1970’s research of a county in Georgia’s Black Belt, Melissa Fay Greene also describes a separation between black and white societies based on wealth and power and maintained by whites who controlled both internal and external resources in the region. A local resident explains this system in his description of the county sheriff, who “had black police officers, probably some of the first in the state, but I believe he had them in order to control the people. McIntosh County under his tutelage was a very depressed area. I think he felt if the county got in too much money, too much industry, too many outsiders, they’d lose control” (Greene 1991:87).
Stack also documents a system of power in the Southern Black Belt in which whites control resources and thwart opportunities which would undermine their control. A city council member with whom she spoke explains:
"Long before there’s ever a public meeting, decisions have already been made. If a business is unionized, the Industrial Development Council won’t have it. If a business pays more than minimum wage, the council won’t have it- they feel like their own operations are at stake, because if one place is paying higher wages, then either that’s where all the best employees are going to wind up or else everybody’s going to have to pay higher wages. And a lot of the industries around here, poultry and textiles and so on, are so cutthroat that the employers are afraid a higher wage would just sink them. So there’s an element of the white community that is absolutely an unmovable obstacle. They don’t want new jobs, they don’t want better jobs, and they’ll fight to prevent it. And the position they’re in, they can win a fight like that. There’s no way to work around them or get something done when they don’t want it. I have been sitting at the table with those people now for five years…and I have tried everything in the book. But if they don’t want to hear it, they don’t hear it. It really is as simple as that: they call the shots" (Stack 1996:173).
Greene explains that in the Black Belt, “the fiction was to be maintained of two separate societies living rather gingerly side-by-side, each with its own hub of social and business life… the unspoken social contract that allowed the whites and the outcast blacks to live in peace” (1991:122). A Georgia resident explains that "as long as you stay in your area, or stay where you know you supposed to be, then that’s the way, that’s ‘friends.’ As long as you’re doing the laundry every week or coming to cook dinner every day and go on back where you supposed to be, you could be ‘friends.’ But when it come to you sitting down at my table and having dinner, that’s something different. And that’s just the way it was. Whether you like it or not, that’s the way it was. And any time you thought about you wanted to switch grounds, the grounds that have been established for you, then you have a problem. You have a problem" (Greene 1991:148).
Cynthia Duncan confirms Greene’s findings on wealth and power in the Black Belt through research conducted in Mississippi in the 1990’s. Duncan finds “a large divide between whites who have money and power and very poor blacks who have long been dependent on them,” where the per capita income for whites is five times the income for blacks (1999:74). She states that blacks live isolated from the world of whites due to corrupt politics, racial segregation, inadequate schools, and white control over resources and jobs in the region. Like Greene discovered in Georgia, this two-class system has created two separate societies. Duncan states that “socially, the black and white communities are distinct worlds with separate schools, churches, separate Christmas parades, separate activities for children” (1999:84).
In the Black Belt Duncan describes, “patterns of inequity were established long ago to meet the economic needs of a plantation economy, and they have been deliberately, and on occasion ruthlessly, maintained to preserve white power and affluence in a black majority area” (1999:96). Powerful whites frequently block industry and misappropriate state funds in order to retain control. Wealthy white farmers claim large government subsidies by manipulating the system and shutting out blacks. They prevent new industry from entering the community in order to ensure a monopoly over employment and wages. Local whites once thwarted a manufacturer’s attempts to enter the area because the company refused to hire whites only (Duncan 1999).
Duncan explains that whites also control blacks on an individual level, maintained in part by blacks’ “longstanding habits of deference and fear of crossing whites” (1999:84). In fact, both blacks and poor whites “believe powerful whites can ruin your life if you oppose them” (1999:113). As local residents told Duncan, “whites can get you out of jail if they need you in the fields, have you permanently blackballed from work if you cross them, or make sure you and your family never get credit anywhere if you let them down” (1999:75). Blacks are so dependent on whites that they refuse to vote powerful whites out of office because they provide them with jobs, loans, and housing. Thus the system is maintained. Duncan even discovered elderly black women who had white Catholic nuns do their grocery shopping for them to ensure they obtained fair prices (Duncan 1999).
In his 2003 article, Gibbs also cites the “social exclusion that continues to restrict the full participation of blacks in rural southern labor markets and in civil society” (2003:254). He describes the Black Belt as a “society still divided along racial lines, with limited economic possibilities” (2003:259). Gibbs rejects the “recent shift in emphasis” away from conflating race with poverty, pointing out that “one cannot disregard the essential fact that being poor and black are nearly synonymous in scores of small towns and villages in the region.” In 2000, one in three blacks in the Black Belt was poor, and the black poverty rate was three times that of the white (Gibbs 2003:256).
It is easy to see how the segregation of races and resources in the Black Belt yielded the absence of bridging social capital. The white community used the closure required by social capital to form a tight-knit, homogenous group which excluded the black community. The Black Belt thus fits Gittel’s description of “hierarchically structured communities run by narrow elites [which] socialize citizens to remain outside the system.” Blacks in the Black Belt “suffer a lack of access to and experience in self-governance which limits association and trust-building among groups, and alienates the excluded from the political system” (Gittel 2003:9). Due in part to their exclusion from white social capital, blacks in the Black Belt formed high degrees of bonding capital within their communities, further isolating themselves from whites. This lack of bridging social capital has prevented the formation of trust and cooperation between the white and black communities which is so vital to successful community development efforts.
Likewise, racial segregation resulted in a dearth of bridging cultural capital between the black and white communities. In addition to controlling resources in the region, whites employed various cultural signals and legitimate knowledge in order to prevent blacks from accessing the white social world. The black community reacted by developing an alternate, non-dominant form of cultural capital. As Merelman states, the isolation of blacks has created some hostility to and suspicion of white-defined cultural capital. Blacks in the Black Belt have been forced to survive by shielding themselves behind a defensive, protective culture designed to ward off, resist, and actively reject domination by whites (Merelman 1994). Thus, in many ways, blacks in the Black Belt possess a separate culture from whites, marked by distinct tastes, speech, music, and social codes. The resulting lack of bridging cultural capital between the black and white communities precludes the formation of a common identity which is crucial for community development.
York, Alabama
York, Alabama, population 2854, sits at the far western edge of Alabama’s Black Belt. One local artist in residence calls York “a go through place,” stating that “things come through York, but rarely stay.” In fact, York began as a “go through place,” as a railroad town whose growth was spurred by the start of the Civil War in 1861 (see Appendix 2, Figure 3). With stores, a hotel, a post office, and a livery stable, it was the center of activity for county residents at the time. Named New York in 1838, the town was incorporated in 1881 as York Station, then became York in 1900 (Avery 1987).
At the turn of the century, York was mostly comprised of working class people connected to the railroad. A day’s work on the railroad was 150 miles, and York is exactly 150 miles from Mobile. Therefore, many men lived in York as it allowed them to work the train to Mobile, spend the night, then work the train back to York the next day. In fact, there were boarding houses in Mobile especially for train crews from York. One local historian states that in York’s early days “there were three saloons that sold whiskey… Horse races were held in the streets. There was little arbitration; differences called for fist fights. The real life adventures were in the streets, and stores stayed open late because of the excitement there” (Riddick 1980).
The saloons left York when Sumter County went dry in 1885 (Riddick 1980), but the town remained a hub for the region in the decades to follow. In 1941, an Alabama State Planning Commission report describes the town as “a trading center for the surrounding agricultural district, a railroad junction, and lumbering town” (Smith 1941:297). York went on to experience exceptional growth in the 1940’s and 1950’s, an era many residents recall as its prime. Between 1940 and 1970, York’s population nearly doubled, even as the population of Sumter County declined by 30%. York held 7.5% of the county population in 1950, and 14.6% by 1960 (“Population & Economy”).
One former resident describes York as “the big town in the county” during the 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s. She remembers going into York with her family once a month to do their shopping. Another agrees “it was a big thing to come to town, to see everyone and to visit. Mama would let us walk downtown on the weekends. The vegetable vendors would be there, people would congregate and socialize. We would go to the Five and Dime to get fabric to sew our little outfits for school the next week. York was bustling when I was little; the streets were never empty. We had a lot of stores back then. None of the buildings were empty. There was a lot more going on. There was always something to do.”
One white resident who grew up in York describes it as “a delightful town,” “a wonderful town to grow up in” and an “idyllic way of life.” She states that everyone knew everyone else, students could walk to school and ride bikes everywhere, and the crime was “almost nil.” There was a community center with an Olympic size swimming pool and a roller rink where the teenagers congregated. The school was the social center of the town; sports were big and so was playing in the band. Though traveling shows came through town, York was close enough to larger places to attend cultural events. She recalls going to Livingston for college events, to Meridian for the symphony, and to Birmingham for music and art.
Another white resident echoes these sentiments, stating that “York was a wonderful place to grow up.” She too mentions the swimming pool, community house, and skating rink, being able to ride her bike everywhere, and a low crime rate. York had two police officers during these years, but only one on duty at a time. “We didn’t hardly need them,” she explains. “That’s just the way it was.” She states that York had “everything a town could want. We had the biggest football team, a big hospital, tennis courts, playgrounds. We had two grocery stores, clothing stores, two drug stores.” She calls York “the place to be when I was growing up.”
History of Segregation
Despite similarities in the way white and black residents describe York’s status in the county, racial segregation yielded disparate experiences of the same town. Though York gained prominence as a railroad town, it was not free from the structure of plantation towns across the Black Belt. Much of the town was owned by a handful of prominent white families, descendants of wealthy whites from South Atlantic states who settled in the area to farm in the 1830’s (Owen 1938). During its heyday, in the forties and fifties, York was 35% black, but the downtown businesses were all white owned. Black residents were not allowed to use the community center, skating rink, or swimming pool described with such fondness by white residents. When attending the movies, blacks were required to sit in the balcony (Muñoz 1992). York thus resembles most Black Belt towns, where a system of power based on segregation has traditionally allowed a few wealthy whites to control the resources.
Black citizens report a constant and keen awareness of their race, and their place because of it, while white citizens often state that there were no racial issues in York. A white resident who grew up in York during the 1930’s explains, “We didn’t recognize discrimination that existed against black people. I loved black people, I was raised with them, I played with them, I was looked after by black women when my mother was often gone. I was taught to respect any grown person, black or white.” In fact, the issue of race relations did not surface for her until college, when she “wrote a paper on how blacks fought in WWII, then came back to live in a place where they had no rights. The teacher wanted to know why I chose that subject,” she explains. “The issue didn’t come up a lot.”
Meanwhile, during the same era, black residents of York sought to start a high school for black students. The only other high school open to black students in the county at that time was ten miles away, in Livingston. Members of the black community contributed by mortgaging their own cattle and horses to raise money. They were given permission by the superintendent of the county school system to demolish a previous all white school and use the materials for their new all black school. Some members of the white community, however, did not want the remains of their school to be used this way. When members of the black community arrived to dismantle the school, “many white men stood around with guns, daring anyone to demolish the building” (Black 1996:3). Despite their fear, the black community proceeded and the building was completed.
Separate experiences due to race continued into the 1940’s and 1950’s. One white resident states that “blacks and whites got along,” that they “were friendly with each other, and that blacks were “treated well and were accepted.” She states York “didn’t have a lot of unrest between races, no boycotts or anything like that.” She does recognize, however, that a separation existed between the races, and that blacks were excluded. She calls this separation “an accepted way of life” in “a typical Southern conservative town.”
A black resident of York during the same time period describes the situation as more than separation. She states, “You had to stay in your place as a black person. Black kids couldn’t sit on the seats in the drug store. There were blacks as housekeepers, but no black clerks. Everything was segregated. All businesses were segregated, except for stores. Blacks had their own washeteria, restaurants, beauty shops, barbershop, hotel, and insurance company.” Another black resident adds that “it was real segregated when I was growing up. You could go in and shop in the stores, but there were not a lot of blacks working there.” A third black resident adds that in the 1950’s, you had to pass an exam and get a white man to verify you were a black man in the area in order to vote.
Crossing the racial boundary was not tolerated in York during the 1950’s and 1960’s. One black resident explains that “blacks and whites hanging out was not approved of. My family received bomb threats the first time my uncle brought his white wife home. That was in the late sixties. My dad had a friend who was white and he’d bring his family over for dinner, but it was frowned upon and he was isolated from the white community because of it. My mother used to work for a white lady and I’d play with her daughter and her daughter’s friend until we were about thirteen, and then the daughter’s friend would act like she didn’t know me on the street.”
Civil Rights
In the late fifties, the black population surged in York. The white population barely increased between 1950 and 1960, while the black population almost tripled. Blacks represented 36% of the population in 1950 and 56% in 1960. Thus, blacks became the majority in York just as the civil rights movement began to build momentum. In fact, the black population would continue to rise while the white population fell until the present day (see Appendix 1).
Despite its rural isolation, York was not too far to be reached by the civil rights movement. One black resident states that York “had a lot of Freedom Riders come through, trying to help integrate the schools.” Another adds that the riders mostly stopped at bus stations, led by troopers, with the purpose of integrating the stations. When they came through York, the white owners of the drug store and the bus station took out all of the seats so the riders could not sit and integrate the store or the station. Blacks in York also boycotted town stores until blacks were allowed to be clerks. Telling me this, the resident laughs and says, “York was a tough little place.” These statements are easily contrasted with those of the white resident who stated that “blacks and whites got along” and that York “didn’t have a lot of unrest between races, no boycotts or anything like that.”
In fact, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to York to lead a march with the purpose of integrating the schools. One local black resident was a teenager at the time, and states she “thought Dr. King was the best thing since sliced bread.” She struck out with the group, marching from the community center to the high school, but only made it as far as the end of the neighborhood. She explains that her father “didn’t want me to march because if [whites] saw your kids marching, they would retaliate against the parents and they could lose their jobs.”
Indeed, there was much white retaliation against blacks who participated in the civil rights movement. One black resident explains that “when you become a registered voter and realize your vote will count” in a place like York which “has been run by a few for a long, long time, people get concerned.” He adds that as a black person in York in the sixties, “You got intimidated.” He describes a night when he went to Selma for a school event for his daughter and was “driving home wearing a coat and tie, so the whites want to know if you’ve been to a [civil rights] meeting. I stopped at a traffic light, then got going when the light turned green and got pulled over for speeding. I was going fifteen miles per hour. The cop wanted me to argue so he could shoot me for resisting but I didn’t. I paid the ticket.”
Other black residents living in York confirm the fear and retaliation present during the civil rights era. One states that “there was fear during that time” and another states that “it was scary.” She states that her parents tried to keep the details away from her, but she knew a lot of people received threats, especially that their houses would be burned. There were cross burnings. There were “several areas you didn’t go to, certain communities. They used to say ‘they’d throw you in the wells up there.’” She adds that Joseph Stegall, a former mayor of York, wrote a book about a massacre that occurred in Sumter County during civil rights years.
In 1969, federal law desegregated the schools. In York, however, integrated schools never occurred. White parents pulled their children out of school for a few months until a new all white private academy could be constructed. White families who could not afford to attend were either sponsored by wealthier community members or simply left town. The separation continues to this day, with virtually all of the white students attending a private academy and all of the black students attending public school. The public pool was also supposed to be integrated following the federal ruling in 1969, but whites in York chose to fill it in with cement instead of allowing blacks to swim there (see Appendix 2, Figure 4). One black resident states that most of the fear and the threats were over after integration, but the segregation continued.
York’s Decline
With mandatory integration, York began its decline, along with most of the Black Belt. One resident explains that “the way of life changed and people couldn’t get used to the new way. The town was not at all ready for integration.” Many young people found jobs in other places and York began to lose population. The movie theater, the community center, the pool, the skating rink, and the city library all closed. (A city library would not open in York for a decade, when it was opened by the Coleman Center). The car dealerships went out of business and even the railway station closed in the early seventies, as trains stopped in York less frequently.
York also lost most of its stores when the owners retired and the younger generation was not present to run them. York residents began shopping in Meridian, Mississippi, made more accessible with the rising number of families who owned cars. One resident suggests that white residents stopped purchasing from York stores and started buying in Meridian because they “got angry in general about the way things were going.” York now has half as many stores as before, causing one resident to call the town “past its vibrancy point.” Another agrees that when York lost its shops, it lost “the heart of the town.”
Following the departure of small business and manufacturing from York, the timber industry entered the region in the late seventies. Gulf States built a paper mill between York and Demopolis (30 miles apart), and some residents found employment there. Overall, however, York declined throughout the 1980’s. One resident states that he came to York in the mid seventies, when it still had “some activity. But that’s changed,” he explains. “The jobs played out, went overseas. The good jobs have gone and nothing has replaced them. I worked at a copy place in 1976. It was a good paying job. I made more than minimum wage is now [in 2005]. McGregor was here. They had a good three shift workforce, but they went to Meridian, and that job hasn’t been replaced. We had a big sewing factory with a workforce made up of almost all the ladies from York and Sumter County. Nothing has replaced that.” A West Alabama resident states that in the eighties “York was nothing. It was a gas station, a stop on the way to Tuscaloosa.”
York continued its decline in the 1990’s and into the present. One longtime resident calls York “a hard place to live.” Another resident who left York in 1985 states that she saw no change in the town upon her return in 2002, except that the arts district was decorated for Christmas. A former resident adds that “it’s been touch and go in [York]. If you’re not growing, you’re dying, and York has been dying for fifty years.” The present day severity of York revolves around high poverty rates, departing youth, job loss, a dwindled economy, and an inability to attract industry. In 1999, 38% of York residents lived below the poverty level, compared to a national average of 12%.
York’s struggle to remain viable is due in large part to the departure of many of its youth, leaving the town with an aging population and a diminished workforce. It’s a vicious cycle: there are few jobs in York, youth leave for places with more opportunities, and York is left without a young workforce to attract more jobs. The following represent several residents’ comments.
"Half of York’s young people leave. Most head north to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, the cities where blacks migrated in the sixties and seventies. They don’t come back until they retire. 70% of the houses being built in York are for retirees who have moved back home. And of those who do stay in York, very few are interested in running their own businesses."
–business owner
"When kids graduate high school [in York], they leave. That doesn’t leave us much workforce. The population of York is aging, and industry wants a young workforce. We need to educate our kids and keep them around for one or two years at the local college [in Livingston] to generate a workforce. Once we have a base, companies will start looking at York as a place with a workforce."
–business owner
"The good students leave York to go where the salaries are better. They have no entertainment here. It’s sad to say, but York is for retired people and older people. Even doctors leave soon after coming here. There’s nothing to hold people."
–longtime resident
"We’ve been exporting both black and white youth, the ones smart enough to leave. If they come back, it will be a better community, but they won’t come back with young children, because no one would want to put their kids in the York schools."
-former resident
Many residents cite York’s need for jobs, businesses, and a boost to the economy to retain youth and to make the town prosperous again. York’s current mayor cites her biggest challenges as economic development and financial stability. She explains that “it’s hard to keep small towns economically viable. It’s hard to provide things the city needs with a small revenue base.” A local resident adds, “We’re losing industry. We’re stepping back in time. Wal-Mart is leaving Livingston in January [2006] because they’re not making any money. They say they’ve been carrying Sumter County. I’m scared to see what will happen. There just isn’t enough in Livingston and York.”
Despite the need for industry, most businesses will not locate in York due to what the mayor calls its “dual educational system.” Virtually of the white students in York attend a private academy, while all of the black students attend public school. The mayor insists that “relocating businesses look at this,” and York’s former mayor agrees. He states that as mayor, “the hardest thing was to get industry to locate here. They wouldn’t because [the white employees] would have to pay for private schools.” A local business owner agrees that segregated schools “put a burden on the city and on white parents who have to send their kids up to the academy.”
One resident believes that “segregated schools put [York] twenty years behind. If industry is looking at York, the first thing they say is that our schools are twenty years behind everyone. They won’t want to have to drive their kids thirty miles or pay for school. This issue should not be here in 2005.” Another resident adds that “the industrial board director said it will take integrated schools [to attract industry]. The primary concern for outsiders is the separate schools and low test scores. They see that and they keep going to the next town.” In addition to industry, new residents and faculty also pass by York because of the segregated schools.
In addition to failing to attract new residents, York lost many of its current residents during the years of its decline. One York resident explains that since desegregation in 1969, York has “had a lot of white flight.” Indeed, between 1970 and 2000, the white population in York decreased by 57% while the black population rose by 34% to represent 79% of York’s population in 2000 (see Appendix 1).
The 1980’s and 1990’s therefore saw a rise in the participation of blacks in the local legislature. Blacks were elected as school board members, as mayor, and as superintendent of education. One resident states that “the tables have turned.” When she left York in 1971, all of the political positions were held by whites, and when she returned in 2002, they were predominantly held by blacks. Howard Kennedy, former mayor of York, states that in 1984, the city council was all white and the majority of the town was black. The black community was encouraging blacks to run, and Kennedy was asked because he was an educator. He served on the city council from 1984-1995, then served as York’s first black mayor from 1995-2000.
The rising number of blacks in local legislature had a positive effect on the black community. One black resident states that when York gained its first black judge in 1980, the number of domestic disturbances declined. She states that the presence of a black judge “gave people a sense of hope,” that they thought, “We can do something now.” The white community, however, did not relinquish control willingly. “[White] people don’t know how to deal with it” one white resident explains. “They’ve lived [in York] all their lives and they don’t want to change. Whites in York hadn’t experienced the fact that blacks can do more than work in their homes or on their land.”
Kennedy agrees that white control in York was “custom. You get used to it and you can’t stand the change. That’s what happened when I was mayor. A few people had been in charge for many years and they thought, ‘They took it from us,’ because our votes started to count. There was white opposition” when Kennedy ran for mayor. “People were disgusted,” he says. “Some said, ‘I didn’t think I would live to see this.’” Some residents contend that during Kennedy’s campaign, whites in York paid two black preachers to run as well, in order to split the black vote. They allege that one of the black men who ran against Kennedy used to accept bribes from whites during the civil rights movement to cancel marches.
Blacks have gained such political clout in York that Kennedy states, “Now if a white wants to win in Sumter County, you have to get black support. If they don’t want you, you won’t get in.” Others agree that the pendulum has swung, but one black resident states that “even when a black person comes into power, they perpetuate the institution [of racism].” Another agrees that York “went from one extreme to the other. Now we have the same mistrust of those in power, except it is against blacks in power. There’s no middle ground here. It never existed in York.”
Modern Racial Segregation in York
Though blacks have gained power in York, whites still control many of the resources, jobs, businesses, money, and political positions. One resident states that racism “permeates the fabric of York. Whites say they like black people,” she explains, “but they don’t understand racism is the power you hold over someone. It’s not about color. It’s institutionalized. It’s not the individual. It’s built into the fabric of our institutions.” Another agrees that “racism still exists. Not like it did in 1954, but there’s still tension. It’s more subtle. You can’t distinguish it, or say it’s blatant. It’s institutional racism. It’s woven into the fiber of the institution.”
There are several examples of institutional racism in York. The town is 78% black, but businesses are primarily owned by whites. Prior to the auction of eight downtown buildings in 2002, only two or three people owned buildings in downtown York; four or five families owned the entire town. When York’s first black mayor took office in 1995, he discovered that the City of York was providing water to the private academy at such a discounted rate it was practically free. A black business owner reports that the local bank refused to give him a loan when his wife was sick, despite the fact that he made consistent payments on his previous loan. He states, “I told the banker I lived right here in York and he knew where to find me. But he refused.”
Institutional racism in York is in large part perpetuated by invisible lines which prevent blacks from accessing the world of whites. One resident explains that “there are things that are ingrained that blacks don’t do that whites do. There are lines between the races that aren’t crossed, that are embedded in the town culture and in the culture of the rural South.” York thus resonates with Gibbs’ description of the Black Belt, where “social exclusion…continues to restrict the full participation of blacks in rural southern labor markets and in civil society” (2003:254).
Social and Cultural Segregation
Longstanding segregation in York has caused the formation of two separate cultures, mirroring the “distinct worlds” Duncan describes (1999:84). These separate worlds have dire implications for community development efforts whose success relies on mobilizing both communities behind a cohesive movement. Speaking of York, one former resident calls race “the big elephant in the room.” Another describes York as “a pretty divided community,” citing the “historical formality” that exists between the races. As Gibbs states, York is a “society still divided along racial lines” (2003:259).
Significantly, residents do not name hostility nor racism as reasons for the segregation in York. Instead, most explain it by citing tradition and custom, as reflected in one local business owner’s statement that “some whites want to stick together because they were bred that way. It hasn’t changed because the young carry on the tradition of their parents. White kids are sometimes raised by black people,” he adds, “but when they grow up, they disassociate from them, or maybe they get along with only them, but don’t branch out to other black people.”
Residents further emphasize custom as the reason for racial segregation in statements concerning segregated churches. One resident states that “black and white don’t go to the same churches because they weren’t brought up like that.” Another believes churches are still segregated possibly “because they have more elderly people in churches that can’t turn loose the ideas they grew up with.” A third explains that “separation came up back in the olden days. It’s always the way it’s been. After slavery, freed blacks started their own churches. We’re not together on anything [in York]: different churches, different Bible studies. I don’t know of any religious organization where we’re together.” She shrugs and states, “We’re just separate people I guess.”
But many in York contend that the races remain separate not because they are inherently separate people, but because there are no spaces in which they can mix. One resident points out that “you don’t even see kids of different races mingling here. There’s no forum for them to get together.” Another states that the separation “infiltrates everything.” Indeed, blacks and whites in York exist separately in businesses, jobs, schools, churches, and even in area cemeteries, which sometimes contain fences separating white graves from black (see Appendix 2, Figure 5).
In addition to the segregation that exists in schools and in the workplace, whites and blacks are socially segregated, as Greene says, “each with its own hub of social and business life” (1991:122). One resident states that “York is fractured socially by race issues.” Blacks and whites have separate community programs and clubs. Certain restaurants are seen as white, while others are seen as black. A local business owner explains he has “mostly black clientele” plus “a few whites that are personal friends, or friends of friends.” When asked why he has so few white clientele, he responds, “This is the South.” Then he adds, “The average white person feels he doesn’t belong in a black setting. The first thing he wants to know is, ‘Am I going to be alright?’”
This custom of separation is perhaps perpetuated most strongly by segregated schools. School segregation has been in place since the federal law to desegregate schools was passed in 1969, and is seen by many in York as “the main issue, the reason the town is so separate.” One resident calls the separate schools “the biggest challenge facing York,” because “children in [York] don’t grow up thinking it’s okay to mix with people who are different from them.”
In York, virtually all of the white students attend Sumter Academy, a private school, while all of the black students attend public schools. “For years and years,” explains one resident, “we’re one of the few towns in the whole country where not one white person goes to the public schools.” In fact, during the 2004-2005 school year in Sumter County, only 4 white students attended public schools, compared to 2624 black students (Adams 2005). The private school has all white faculty, while the public schools have both black and white faculty. The white faculty at the public schools who are parents, however, do not send their own children to the schools in which they work.
Some white parents in York do not send their children to Sumter Academy. Instead, they opt out of the system all together by home schooling them or enrolling them in public school in a different county. Many white kids from York are driven to public schools in Meridian, Mississippi or in Demopolis, Alabama, both thirty miles from York. One resident calls this “strange” because both Meridian and Demopolis have integrated schools. Students are also integrated at the University of West Alabama in Sumter County, well attended by white students from York. The black to white ratio at the university is 50/50, and one professor reports that “students integrate without a problem. There is no friction.” Even though for many of the students, “it’s the first time they’ve sat by someone of a different race.” In fact, one black student from York met white students from York for the first time while attending the university. She calls it “sad and embarrassing that I didn’t know them.”
So if white parents will send their children to integrated schools outside of York, why do they refuse to send their children to integrated schools in York? One resident believes that whites stay in private school “because they were brought up that way. There is also the notion that York public schools aren’t good,” she adds. Indeed, in recent interviews with white parents in Sumter County, “race was never, even when provoked, cited as the ultimate reason for sending white children to the private school. The poor quality of the public school’s education was continually mentioned as the reason for sending kids to either Demopolis or the academy” (Adams 2005:75).
Another resident states that “people are so ostracized when you don’t follow the norm.” She believes “white parents would get flack from the community if they put their kids in York public schools.” The Superintendent of Sumter County Public Schools confirms that “any white families that move here are pressured out of the public schools (by realtors and white leadership)” (Adams 2005:71). Another resident states that public schools in Meridian and Demopolis are racially balanced, while Sumter County is 80% black. Therefore, “white students would be a minority [in York public schools].” Interviews with white parents in Sumter County confirm that whites will return to public schools only if a racial balance can be achieved (Adams 2005).
One black York resident states, “I guess whites feel better being at private schools. So much goes on at public schools. Private schools don’t have problems like ours, drug and pregnancy problems.” In fact, white parents consistently cite a healthy atmosphere and safety as reasons for not sending their children to public schools in Sumter County. The Headmaster of Sumter Academy points out the lack of locks on the lockers and the school’s emphasis on morals and values (Adams 2005). Further, Adams writes that “a 2002 stabbing at the public high school in Livingston that left a special education student dead legitimated [white parents’] sentiments to a large degree. Of course, this tragic incident is a singular, isolated event that has now given white parents the rationale needed to justify their separation from the public system” (2005:74).
Though white parents in York believe their school is safer, with higher values and a better education, it is not free from the problem of scarce resources that daunts the Black Belt. A resident who has worked on community projects in both public and private schools in York states that “both schools are lacking. It’s not a wealthy community,” she explains, “and when you split the little resources you have, all the kids have a lot less.” Another states that “Sumter Academy is making it, but they’re struggling. They’re losing enrollment as this area loses [white] population.”
Effects of Social and Cultural Segregation
In addition to splitting scant resources, social and cultural segregation in York has several other dire consequences which impede community development. First, segregation prevents blacks and whites from developing friendships with one another. An Alabama resident who has researched York explains that “older white people who have lived through racism have a hard time talking to blacks because they’re cognizant of what they’ve gone through. They tiptoe around it, so there’s not the natural ease that’s present in a friendship. And if you don’t have that natural ease, you don’t go to each other’s parties, even if you’re invited.” A York resident adds that “because people don’t come together in the schools, they don’t know how to talk to people like they’re people. It always becomes about race.”
Indeed, segregation fuels a heightened awareness of race in York, resulting in a tendency to view everything through a racial lens. Visiting artists in residence who had conducted community art projects outside of the South were surprised when white school children in York drew themselves with a yellow marker, even though the paper was white. One states, “They were really aware of the color of their skin,” adding that he has noticed “a heightened awareness of race in York” which causes “some things that aren’t about race [to] get pushed into being about race when [the issue] is really more personality driven. It’s easy for things to fall into the race category, and it gets to the point where there’s so much tension around race, how could things not be about it? It precedes everything.” Thus, although there are undoubtedly incidents of racism in York, there is also a danger that incidents which are not about race get pushed into the race category due to the lack of communication and interaction between the black and white communities. These incidents serve to cement segregation between black and white and lay the ground for additional misunderstandings.
Further, segregation promotes ignorance and distrust between the black and white communities. Duncan describes a Black Belt town in Mississippi where everything is segregated, with “no social interaction between the races, and no trust. Stereotypes thrive,” she states, “when isolation is this complete” (1999:85,89). The situation is similar in York. One resident explains that “because the races don’t do anything together, including worshipping or working together, a distrust develops between them, created by people who are paranoid, in denial, or who make money by keeping the separation in place.” Another confirms that “there are cultural misunderstandings between [the races].” A third resident states that “communication between the black and white communities is real difficult. There are still lines drawn. There is still a lack of trust.” A local business owner adds that blacks and whites “really don’t mix too well together. There’s still a lot of segregated issues that need to be resolved.” Another agrees York “has a long way to go as far as race relations are concerned.” Thus, in York, segregation has prevented the development of bridging social capital between the black and white communities, precluding them from working together for a mutual purpose.
Segregation has also prevented bridging cultural capital from developing in York, as blacks and whites attend separate events, clubs, restaurants, parties, and festivals. In part due to their continued exclusion from white culture, the black community has developed an alternate cultural capital, with its own codes, patterns, and values. The maintenance of separate cultures has emboldened stereotypes the black and white communities hold about each other by preventing cultural exchange. It has also precluded blacks and whites from forming a common identity, further solidifying their separation in all aspects of life. This has serious implications for the art movement in York, which depends on broad based participation and unity among disparate groups.
Segregation in the Art Movement
Unfortunately, the cultural and social segregation which permeates York has historically infiltrated the arts as well. Prior to efforts in the past five years to redefine it as an interracial center, the Coleman Center was another racially identified space in York, traditionally “seen as a small, elite club of white people.” The mayor states it used to be “a white thing” and a local business owner refers to it as “their center.” The black community believed the Coleman Center “catered to a white audience,” one artist in residence explains, “excluding the largest part of the population in the county. It functioned like a high school club. It was a small group of people. Older, white people, because those are the donors. It was a club for little old lady white folks having Sunday tea.” In fact, the perception of the Coleman Center as “white people having tea” was echoed by several members of the black community.
Members of the black community who have attended Coleman Center functions in the past have confirmed their perceptions (perhaps minus the tea). One local artist in residence states that when the center holds openings, “It’s all white folk.” At meetings, says a local business owner, “You’d think York was 80% white and 20% black instead of the other way around.” At one Coleman Center event, a black attendee told another that “she thought she’d be the only black person there.”
The Coleman Center was not, however, just something white people did. Rather, members of the black community often voiced the opinion that the Coleman Center was expressly off limits to them. One artist in residence called the Coleman Center “something ingrained that blacks don’t do that whites do.” Another agrees, citing “that invisible line that people believe shouldn’t be crossed, an old community convention.” This point is perhaps best illustrated by an anecdote from a local white artist. When she offered a black York resident a tour of her studio in the Coleman Center in 2003, he asked, “Can black people go in there?”
In addition to being viewed as explicitly for whites, the Coleman Center was perceived as being for the elite. One resident refers to it as an “elite club” and as an “art playground for a few select members of the community.” Most of the Coleman Center’s donors were wealthy whites, and most of its private contributions came from Riddick and her friends. The Coleman Center once held an opera event to raise money, and one of its two yearly fundraising events was a wine and cocktail party. A former fundraiser explains that “in Sumter County, people love to dress up and go to cocktail parties. It’s a hat and glove county.” He adds that many of the “art openings were held on Sunday afternoons, as dressed up occasions. That’s what people responded to.”
Because it was seen as an establishment for the white elite, the Coleman Center attracted and involved a narrow group of participants. It is described by one artist in residence as a “social establishment for a select group of individuals.” Another resident states that “the same people attended all the functions.” When the Friends of the Coleman Center, its fundraising body, formed in 1991, they obtained the membership list from the Sumter County Fine Arts Council and invited its members to a meeting. After agreeing on the need for a fundraising body for the Coleman Center, officers were elected and dues were paid at that very first meeting, making it impossible for anyone outside of the Sumter County Fine Arts Council to be an elected officer.
While the black community was largely left out of the Coleman Center, some wealthy blacks did participate. One resident states that the Friends of the Coleman Center “brought nice, lovely black and white people together” and that both races attended the cocktail parties. The Friends eventually had members of both races as officers, and blacks who had the means to do so contributed financially. He states that “art brought black and white together…regardless of politics, race, gender, religion. Those things never entered. People came together regardless of those things.” Despite this seemingly open environment, however, blacks (or whites) earning low or middle incomes were strikingly absent.
A further comment by the same individual illustrates this point well. He explains that “one year during Black History Month we had a Smithsonian travel exhibit at the Coleman Center. The black home economic girls served refreshments and their parents came because their kids were there. It was an afternoon where whites and blacks were simply at an art show. It was a good feeling of humanity.” Despite the presence of both races, however, blacks were there fundamentally in a service capacity. Those blacks who viewed art did so almost by accident, as they were only present due to their connection to the people serving the drinks. Clearly, this is not an environment where whites and blacks were invited to partake equally, despite this individual’s portrayal of it as such.
Despite all this, many in the black community were simply unaware of the Coleman Center’s existence or unsure of its purpose. One artist states that the general response of the black community to the Coleman Center was, “What’s that building and why is it always closed?” One resident recalls wondering, “What do they do there? There was never anything showing,” she explains. “It was just a beautiful building. Sometimes you’d see art and sometimes not.” A local business owner states, “I knew the Coleman Center was there, but I didn’t know anything about them.” Another resident calls the Coleman Center “a nice place to go,” but doesn’t “think too many people use it.”
As in the broader society of York, social and cultural segregation has heightened awareness of race and fueled perceptions of racism within the art movement. One example occurred upon the search for a new Coleman Center director. A local artist reports that a black man from Mobile who was in his fifties and had three years experience running an art gallery applied for the position and was not granted an interview. This same artist offered to be the interim director during the search, and was turned down. The Coleman Center then hired a seventeen year old black high school student to direct in the interim. The artist states, “I personally think they didn’t want a black man in charge.” These statements are easily contrasted with those by a member of the white community, who does not “believe any of the recent changes in directors in York was racial. There were egos involved,” she explains. “I don’t believe there are racial problems in the art community.”
This same artist also contends that he made suggestions to the Coleman Center which “fell on deaf ears, either because they weren’t sophisticated or I was black.” He classifies the members of the board as “old guard with an ingrained tendency towards racism” and adds that he once met a black lawyer who is president of a well-known dance center in Birmingham and agreed to be on the Coleman Center board. When the artist told the director of the Coleman Center about the lawyer, however, she failed to contact him, an incident the artist perceived as racist. “Things change to remain the same,” he states.
A black board member also cites incidents she perceives as racist which occurred in the art community. She states that a Coleman Center building was once owned by a white family named McDaniel, who then sold it to a black family named Wimberley. The Coleman Center then bought the building from the Wimberley family, but named it McDaniel. She states, “I told them they needed to name something in the building Wimberley, and they said they would name the patio Wimberley, but I’m still waiting.” This same board member states that her husband had formerly been involved with securing funding for the Coleman Center, and she “used to wonder if they put me on the board to keep [the funding] in place.”
These incidents may indeed be racist and may not be, but perhaps the more important observation is that members of the black community perceive racism while members of the white community do not. In a town as segregated as York, these incidents reflect a vicious cycle at work: they are both caused by the lack of bridging capital between the black and white communities and they solidify the lack of capital between them.
The dissension created by segregation in York often prevents effective communication between the black and white communities, stunting the growth of a cohesive art movement. Anecdotes from a black business owner illustrate this point well. He states that several years ago, a white business owner felt the sign above his store was indecent and asked him to change it. He did, stating “I did it to please her.” A few years later, this same white business owner, along with fellow white members of the art community took photographs of a building owned by the black business owner to city council and asked that the building be condemned because they felt its appearance was a detriment to York.
Statements by the black business owner reveal the tension and lack of communication caused by a lack of bridging capital. He states, "The art community is not approaching it right. They don’t understand how things go. If they want me to beautify my buildings, why not offer me grants? Or why not ask me? Say, ‘As soon as you are able, why don’t you do something about it?’ I care about beautiful things. I’m a dreamer. I dream of beautiful things and beautiful people. I never dream of streams with milk cartons and foam in them, I dream of streams with clear running water, water pure enough to drink. They need to find a way to help instead of finding fault. I had hard times for three or four years, and after this, it looked like they just wanted to keep it hard instead of helping."
Social and cultural segregation also results in a lack of cooperation between blacks and whites in the art movement. The mayor states that there are “racists on both sides,” meaning there are both blacks and whites who refuse to work together. An artist in residence adds that “in small towns, there is a lack of cooperation between people that is needed to create the institutions and practices that make a town grow. It’s the same for York. For the town to grow in the arts, it has to grow in so many other ways. It has to change the way it sees itself as a town.” A local business owner calls the creation of a racially inclusive art movement “a sensitive, tricky situation.” She states, “You can have a successful organization as a white person, but if you want it to be community wide, you’ll lose some white support.”
The contingent support of some in the white community and the segregation in the art movement have split York’s scant resources. Speaking of a black business owner in York, one artist states that “no one gives [him] respect. If he retires, he won’t get a key to the city, but he’s a longtime business owner and he hires people for the city. He’s a pillar of the community though [whites] don’t want to admit it.” This black business owner himself states that on “Friday and Saturday nights, [my place] brings in a lot of traffic. People get a chance to look at York and want to come back because they’ve had good times here.”
Due to York’s cultural segregation, however, members of the white community have failed to catalog this business as an asset and to include it in their efforts to draw people to York. Instead, they demanded that the business owner change his sign and attempted to get one of his buildings condemned, because his business does not resonate with their vision of York. Strikingly, this business owner described the same vision for York as did the art community. He believes, however, that his status as an outsider to the movement would prevent his ideas from being heard. He states, “The tourist idea really needs to be expressed by someone with more clout and authority than I have.” Unfortunately, this anecdote reveals a division of cultural resources and a lack of appreciation for black culture in York.
This chapter ends on a less than positive note, but fortunately many in York do seek to bridge cultural and social capital between the black and white communities and to promote an integrated art movement. The next chapter explores strategies for and successes in integrating York and its art movement. Importantly, segregation is not the only challenge facing the art movement in York; challenges in leadership and funding continue to play a role. But because integration is most often mentioned as the most important challenge impeding the art movement’s success, it is the focus of this study.