Lack of Internet, transportation isolates families

A lack of Internet access, reliable transportation, jobs and quality grocery stores are hurting low-income women and their families in rural Mississippi, a new report says.

The report, “Unequal Lives: The State of Black Women and Their Families,” points out that more than one in four children are born in poverty in Mississippi, many of them to single mothers. Unemployment for black women in these rural counties is almost 24 percent — four times higher than for white women.

A lack of Internet access and reliable transportation isolates low-income families in the rural South from good jobs, health care, education and even quality grocery stores, the report says.

“The economy is out there in space right now, and we’re walking around in concrete shoes,” said Oleta Fitzgerald, director of the Children's Defense Fund's Southern Regional Office.

There must be a change, “not only to move Mississippi forward,” she said, “but primarily to move these families forward because they’re at the bottom of the scale.”

The report  is being unveiled at 10 a.m.  today at the state Capitol.

The report points out that only 59 percent have Internet access in rural Mississippi — the lowest rate in the nation.

“Without broadband Internet, rural places will become places of exile,” said Mississippi native W. Ralph Eubanks, whose article for Wired magazine, “The Land That the Internet Era Forgot,” details those woes.

When his parents moved to the Delta in the 1950s, "they knew people that didn't have electricity," he said. “Today, the broadband Internet is as essential as electricity.”

He said he decided to explore the issue, curious about why “income inequality has become institutionalized in the Mississippi Delta.”

He hopes both investments and technology can solve the problem, he said. “There are going to have to be wireless solutions to access broadband.”

Fitzgerald said even the 59 percent of Internet coverage that does exist in Mississippi can be “spotty.”

“If you are in Anguilla, you might have a cellphone and you might be able to text, but you do not have access to the Internet,” she said.

She said some Delta libraries lack Internet access and even have books still stamped “Colored School.”

“How do we get mobile libraries so young people can connect to the Internet?” she said.

British travel writer Richard Grant spent a year in rural Mississippi before writing his new book, “Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta.”

In addition to tackling the problems of the digital divide and reliable transportation, thinking must be transformed, he said. “There are some people in Tchula who are 40 and have never been to Jackson.”

The Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative for Economic and Social Justice, which works in 77 rural counties in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, put out  today's report.

Fitzgerald said these counties have been stuck in poverty for decades.

“We have more and more children in extreme poverty,” she said. “They’re not impoverished by themselves.”

The poverty rate for these households headed by single mothers is 30 percent higher.

“Welfare is gone, transportation is gone, and job skills and companies are not coming,” Fitzgerald said. “Schools are not preparing us for the jobs we don’t know about.”

These areas are “getting marginalized,” she said. “It’s not trying to say, ‘Woe is us,’ but ‘Let’s get busy.’”

Mississippi’s agrarian society gave way to low-wage, low-skill manufacturing jobs, many of which have now gone to Mexico or other countries, she said.

“We’ve got to have another conversation about economic opportunity — not just on how many plants we can get to come here,” she said.

The initiative is teaching skills for new kinds of jobs in agriculture that are “not just working on the farm,” she said. “We have to do agriculture in a different way.”

Sure, Mississippi can continue competing with Mexico, she said, “but if we really want an opportunity for our children, grandchildren and the children that follow them, we’ve got to put something else in place.”

Contact Jerry Mitchell at jmitchell@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7064. Follow @jmitchellnews on Twitter.