Inside North Carolina's Tragic Rot Belt. Can These Places Be Saved??
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Published 2022-05-06
Dr. Paul Cleveland's website is here: www.boundarystone.org
If you drive around the state of North Carolina these days, you might be a little baffled. Sure, there’s a lot of talk about how fast the Raleigh area is growing, and how much money is flowing into Charlotte. The coast might be the best coast in the country. But as you drive around many of the rural areas of this state, you’ll see some communities falling apart. Entire counties in some parts of the state have gone from prosperous to poverty in a manner of decades. It’s estimated that 6% of the entire state of North Carolina lives in a distressed community just like this.
The midwest and parts of the northeast have the rust belt - you know - places like Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo that have fallen on hard times since the auto industry left. In this video, we’re going to drive through what has been called the Rot Belt. They are places in the south that were former agriculture hubs, but have been decimated now that farming isn’t as profitable and as a result, so many of these small communities are, well, rotting away.
Aww the Rot Belt. You could draw up a rough approximation as to where the economic decline of North Carolina is the worst and people could argue about where the exact boundaries are. But for the sake of perspective, the area we’ll be focusing on is here - an area in the north central part of the state along the Virginia state line and here in the southwestern part of the state along the south carolina border. The area I’ll drive through is the latter - and I’ll specifically focus on Robeson County. But we’ll see footage of other rot belt hubs in this state. All of the areas we’re driving through are still surrounded by farmland just like this.
Robeson County has some of the poorest and forsaken communities in North Carolina. Right now, we’re in the community of Parkton, population 435. There are abandoned homes all over the place and other streets that look like they’ll be all but wiped away at some point. It’s a patchwork of homes, empty and overgrown lots, abandoned streets and empty storefronts.
About 1 in 4 people here in Parkton lives at or below the poverty line, and that number’s going up as time goes on. A whopping 75% of kids live in poverty here. There’s a bunch of houses that have sold here for well under $25,000.
Parkton is decaying right before our eyes. Like many other towns in eastern North Carolina, it’s a shadow of its former bustling self. The biggest reasons for the decay are a loss of textile mill jobs and a dramatic downtown in tobacco farming.
Then all these big corporations have moved in and THEY handle all the farming needs now. Of course, they don’t have a connection to the land or the community -they just want to make a profit.
The decline of the economic fortunes in places like Parkton have also impacted the region’s health outcomes. The average life expectancy for people here is about 73 years, while 100 miles away in Wake County, where Raleigh is, folks live to be about 81 years. A real big difference.
Young people here in Robeson County experience a death rate that’s 60% higher than the state average, and the homicide rate here is more than triple the state average.
Leaders who manage these communities always try the same things to turn things around here - you know - asking the state for more money for the struggling schools, more money to attract new businesses, and more money to boost agriculture production. Sometimes they get the money, sometimes they don’t. But it doesn’t seem to matter WHAT money comes in. The Rot Belt further rots. Sure, there are non profits and government programs in place to help the remaining small time farmers with grants and marketing their goods. But the fact is so many people in this area have just turned their backs on farming. Many forever.
And they’re not transitioning to white collar jobs either. Only 12% of the population in this part of the state has a college degree. It’s just generational here.
Some communities like this have to resort to volunteer firefighters and some will go months without a police officer until one can be lured in take the badge.
Two other distressed communities I visited in north Carolina’s rot belt were Lumberton and Kinston.
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All Comments (21)
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There were once many of these little “Mill towns” in the Piedmont, and they once thrived. If you worked at one, you’d never get rich, but they paid the bills and paid enough to raise a family. When textile production moved to China and Southeast Asia, they died out. A rotten shame.
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I visit NC every week (I'm South Carolinian) and its so so rare to see someone talk about the Carolinas in this way. This is how my family lives, this is how pain thrives, and it hurts my heart but I feel so seen. Thanks for covering this side of the country
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The loss of farming, textile, and furniture jobs has been hard on a large part of NC.
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This looks a lot like the entire Mississippi delta. Apparently what I thought was a local rot is actually nationwide.
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I'm curious about why you chose a professor from a small private college in Alabama to explain the economic history of NC? I would think that you could have found any number of economics professors right here in NC who could have given a more complete view of our very complex NC economic situation and history than, "It was all going great until the federal government ruined it in the 1940's." That left out so, SO much.
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The Bypasses hurt the small towns as well. Convenience of saving 5 minutes to skirt around smaller towns has greatly hurt rural towns.
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I would love to buy into one of these declining areas, but the real estate industry makes up these ridiculous prices. 20,000 for a shack in a GHOST TOWN?! That is insane.
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I live in this area and it is accurate. The loss of the textile Mills has completely devastated the area
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I grew up in Lumberton and the area where I lived was middle class. It was clean, safe and the schools were decent. It was a good place to grow up. The community was filled with upstanding citizens. I rode through the area recently and it looks the same in some areas, others not so much. Definitely missing the manufacturers that used to line I-95.
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I'm from Columbus County, NC but i've lived in Robeson County for the last 6 years in Fairmont. I can tell you right now, getting people to move here is not going to help. It is absolutely generational and these people are so used to poverty that they will never do anything to change their situation. I genuinely think there is no hope for this place. I only moved here because i met and married a man from here but now that we're separated, i'm working on getting the hell out.
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The name rust belt comes from the decline of the steel industry. It used to be called the steel belt.
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It’s the same story wherever you go. In rural towns it’s because the jobs left, so you have extreme poverty. The only reason these people aren’t homeless is due to the cheap housing because no one wants to live there. In the big towns you have extreme income disparities, which have made rent/housing unaffordable for the unskilled labor force, and that results in homelessness.
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I live here in NC and it make me very sad to see abandoned houses and towns. Near my home Ralph Lauren purchased some land for their building and surrounding land near their facility. Now when I go down the highway all I see is eight empty houses rotting and weeds taking over from neglect. Thanks Ralph Lauren
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Left the big city for a small city in 2017, then moved into a rural small mountain town in 2018. Your comments about the lands history and people in your business is spot on and the only downside besides lack of opportunities. We own a small business and don’t rely on local business. In truth, we like the simple life and I would never move back into a city. My wife’s grandfather was right “all cites are the same”.
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I was shocked to see Parkton as it is today. I lived there in the early 90's and it was friendly and safe. Yes, it wasn't affluent, but we knew everyone and there was a real sense of community. We had some stores, a post office, a bank, three churches. I belonged to the Garden Club and we did community projects. We had a wonderful 4th of July parade every year. My husband and I bought a home and completely remodeled it. It was wonderful. I taught at Lumberton High School and Flora McDonald Academy. My husband was in the Green Berets.
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The warmth and sense of community back home in Robeson County is undefeated. I sure do love my Lumbee people and want to see Rob Co come up.
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The loss of tobacco and cotton has killed the Carolina’s
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I’m from rural Ireland and it’s so through about the nosey neighbours. I had to move a couple of years ago (pandemic and family reasons) and honestly being from here I know how to handle nosey people. Be friendly but private and have a good come back ready when nosey Bridget makes some comment. You get use to it
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Not the farming jobs that left. The textile industry is what heeled NC flourish and when the political class decided to ship all the jobs overseas poverty began to creep in
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I've been living in NC for four years now and when the pandemic started, I hatched a plan to visit all 100 of the state's county seats. I'm up to 77, including some of the counties you traveled in this video, and plan to hit the remaining 23 possibly by year's end. I have two important (to me) points to make. I cannot overemphasize how many economists would have a wildly different viewpoint from your guest. To blame the decline of rural communities entirely on federal policy starting with the New Deal is... well, I want to say mind-boggling, but I'll be polite and say it's one opinion out of thousands of others. These towns didn't start falling apart in the 1940s; they fell apart when working-class jobs moved overseas, and that's a much, much more recent development. Which is all to say, I was enjoying your video and hearing your own reporting until you devoted most of it to a non-NC-based professor with a very particular bone to pick with the federal government. If you're going to turn to experts, I'd really encourage you to hear from a variety of opinions, particularly those with which you yourself might personally disagree! You know, there are probably several policy experts who grew up in these very communities who'd love to share their insights with you! I know it's more work, but you're making videos about a really difficult topic, entrenched poverty in this state and in this country, and it's a topic that deserves being cracked open both gingerly and thoroughly. Secondly, I'm really, really surprised you don't mention race at all in this video. I can unequivocally say that, having visited 77% of this state, those communities that have been the most "forgotten" are Black communities. There are of course, especially in the South, historical reasons why this is the case and why Black farmers never had an opportunity to thrive in the state's agricultural region (and in this case, sure, I'd be happy to blame the federal government!). There are of course so many white families struggling with poverty in this state, but it has been so glaringly obvious to me which communities the state has just turned its back on. Those are majority-Black communities without fail. Might I suggest you speak with an expert who could address the inescapable factor of race in this topic? I think my suggestions would make Mappy happy! And thanks for remaining curious about this beautiful state and making your videos!
