A Slow Demise in the Delta

One industry that is succeeding in the Delta is casino gambling, which arrived in Tunica County, near Memphis, in 1993. At the time, the county had an annual budget of $3 million and most of the same problems that the rest of the Delta had. Today, it has a budget of $51 million and uses the money for new roads, recreation centers and housing grants for the elderly and disabled.

"The casinos pay great benefits. The wages average maybe $9 to $10 an hour," said Clifton Johnson, the chief financial officer for Tunica County. "Some people would probably say that's not a living wage. But I would say for this area that is a living wage."

Goal Is 'One New Business'

Decades ago, the agricultural town of Shelby was a thriving community with stores and restaurants and a busy downtown. Mayor Dorothy Grim recalled traveling here from a nearby town as a child to do her "shopping and trading." The cotton and rice farms were a source of jobs and money.

But as agriculture changed, so did Shelby. Farms got bigger. Combines went from four rows to six to eight, and now to a dozen. There was less need for unskilled laborers. Less money changing hands.

Small businesses began to close. School integration and a complicated race history accelerated the flight of white families. Today, more than 90 percent of Shelby's 2,700 residents are black. The median household income of $17,798 is less than half the national average. Most of the stores straddling downtown Beale Street are boarded up. Many neighborhoods are scarred with tumbledown bungalows and weed-choked lots.

A few years back, Grim, Hill and a cluster of other spirited women formed a group called Shelby Women United to tackle the town's problems. With a state grant and a lot of elbow grease, they helped transform an old train depot into a library. Volunteers tore down 80 dilapidated buildings and removed abandoned cars. Now, the group is searching for ways to attract businesses and start a chamber of commerce.

"The goal is to get one new business to go into one of these abandoned buildings," said Hill, 66, who moved to Shelby nine years ago and is white. "That would be a good start."

Shelby has received modest help from the Agriculture Department's Rural Development program but is seeking much more. From 2001 to 2005, it received a total of $106,000 that was used to buy police cars and a mower.

"We would like to get more help from Rural Development," Grim said. "But it's hard because we're small and don't have the staff."

In 2005, Congress slashed the Rural Development budget by $439 million as part of a budget reconciliation. The remaining funding is stretched across 40 programs, including water and sewer projects, rental assistance, and grants for police cars. More than half of the awards are loans and loan guarantees, not grants. Four of the 10 counties studied by The Post received no economic development money.

"It takes an enormous amount of energy and time to get anything done that is not farm-related," said Robert L. Jackson, a state senator from Quitman County and director of a nonprofit development corporation.

'They Have No Hope'

Rogers Morris, 61, operates one of the few large black-owned farms in Bolivar County. He grows sweet potatoes, soybeans and vegetables on about 500 acres near Mound Bayou. "We're not impacted much," he said of the federal subsidies. "I maybe get $8,000 to $9,000" a year. "It helps a little. But the subsidies basically go to white farmers."