Rural black turnout uncertain

Fifth in a series of occasional articles.

SOUTH BOSTON, Va. - Its name notwithstanding, Executive Cuts barber shop is a cluttered, old-fashioned African-American tonsorial parlor: The worn screen door leads to a long room with heavy barber chairs lined up on a checkerboard floor. The barbers tape family snapshots on their oversized work-station mirrors, and there's a wall poster promoting fatherhood on the wall, of a black man reading to a child on his lap.

Proprietor Wayne Ferguson is a retired soldier who enlisted to leave this tiny, quiet Virginia town and see the world, but came home to care for ailing parents and start his own business. After nearly a decade away, Ferguson, 52, said much has changed but a lot remains the same - namely, what he calls a "plantation mentality" among some black residents.

"I come back, and it's still the same: blacks not doing anything, not progressing," he said, deftly shaving a client's head. "People leave out of here, go away, come back and nothing's changed. It's kind of frustrating."

Ferguson said he's energized by the historic campaign of Barack Obama, and is eager to be part of the anticipated massive black voter turnout that could keep Obama competitive in Virginia, a crucial swing state no Democrat has carried since 1964.

But rural black voters like him could be an uncertain constituency in terms of turnout - particularly in the South, where a long-range study shows they vote at drastically lower rates than their urban counterparts. In south central Virginia, a few miles from the North Carolina border, racism's bitter legacy is part of the equation.

Though black people make up more than 30 percent of the population of Halifax County, where South Boston is located, voter participation rates are well below the national average, and about 20 percent lower than their urban and suburban counterparts, according to the American National Election Studies, an independent organization that tracks voting trends. The gap is even wider when rural black Southerners are compared with blacks in rural, urban and suburban communities in the North.

Analysts link the disparity in part to persistent income and education gaps among rural black Southerners, noting voting rates among all races rise and fall with education and salary. People in the Southern countryside tend to have lower incomes and poorer educations, but the difference is especially pronounced when race is considered.

Although he cherishes his right to vote, Ferguson worries that too many black residents don't.

"They'll say, 'I don't need to vote. The white man is gonna do what he wants to do anyhow,' " he said. "I vote in every town election. I look back in history. Some of our ancestors died" to ensure that right.

On a hot, humid Tuesday afternoon in late summer, the center of South Boston epitomizes the cliche, "sleepy Southern town." The sun is relentless and sidewalks shimmer from the heat. On Main Street, which slopes through town toward the Dan River, there are few restaurants and even fewer open stores. A locomotive rumbles through the outskirts of town, its wailing horn slicing through the quiet.

That torpor is an appropriate metaphor for the lack of political and economic power in rural black enclaves, compared with their urban counterparts.

Between 61 and 64 percent of Northern blacks vote, according to the American National Election Studies, but in the South, according to the survey, about 53.8 percent of urban Southerners and 48.2 percent of suburban black residents voted during that period. But the rate of rural black Southerners who voted is just 44.1 percent.

South Bostonian Lonnie Mosley, a 36-year-old African-American factory worker, said he won't vote on Nov. 4 - and hasn't cast a ballot in at least 11 years - because politicians "are going to do what they want to do. That's how I feel."

Mosley said the last ballot he cast was for President Bill Clinton. Though millions of black voters are eager to cast ballots for Obama, he said Obama's historic run for the White House won't change his mind.

Whites "run the system," he said, pointing to the disputed 2000 presidential election and widespread reports of disenfranchised black voters in Florida. "They've got so much power over the black community. They have the upper hand."

The town's history tracks that of the South. Some brick storefronts that line downtown date to the 19th century when South Boston was a state economic powerhouse fueled by local tobacco. The industrial age brought textile and furniture factories, and thousands of low-skill, high-wage jobs.

But in recent decades, smoking rates plunged and factories closed, draining away many jobs and leading some residents to move away. Unemployment here is 8 percent - twice the state average - and South Boston's population has dropped about 3.5 percent from 1996 to 2006.

Some renovated storefronts and a nearby farmer's market suggest attempts at a revitalization; the city markets itself as an undiscovered gem for history buffs, nature lovers and auto racing fans. The South Boston Motor Speedway on the edge of town has become part of the NASCAR schedule. But several of the downtown stores have "For Rent" signs in the windows, and the farmer's market has just one vendor, selling home-grown produce from the back of his pickup truck.

Ed Owens, a black South Bostonian and the town's vice mayor, said integration, "when it arose, went fairly smoothly. The difference now is not racial, but socio-economic," a divide "between the haves and the have-nots, and the majority of the have-nots seem to be African-American."

After emancipation, freed slaves settled in rural enclaves across the South. US Census demographic maps reflect what's known as the "black belt" of Dixie: millions of African-American Southerners, concentrated in a wide swath that sweeps east from Mississippi, north through the Carolinas and into Virginia.

Southern political academics suggest rural black voters could help the Illinois senator break the Republicans' legendary hammerlock on the region - if they turn out in unprecedented numbers. Heavy African-American turnout, well above 80 percent in some places, was decisive for Obama in the South Carolina and North Carolina primaries against Hillary Clinton.

In South Boston, there is evidence of racial progress in politics: two of the seven members of the Town Council are African-American, including Owens, and two of eight members of the Halifax County Board of Supervisors are black. All the remaining elected officials in the area, however - including county treasurer, clerk of courts and county commissioner - are white. So are the town's police and fire chiefs.

The town's economic engine now lies along Route 50, a four-lane highway and industrial corridor on the southern edge. Trucks carrying lumber, gravel and other commodities rumble past strip malls, gas stations, fast-food restaurants and the handful of factories that still function here. The jobs are on this strip, a sign of the shift toward service jobs.

Owens and others have said South Boston's future lies in attracting high-tech companies, which need educated workers. So the town has transformed a turn-of-the-century tobacco warehouse into the Southern Virginia Regional Education Center, where students can earn a high school diploma or a college degree.

"We have to go back and retrain the people who got lost," said Owens. "Thirty percent of people here don't have a GED. It hurts economic development."

The school, which recently opened a nursing school, is enrolled to capacity with a long waiting list.

Still, one African-American in South Boston believes the black community's mindset needs to change as well.

The resident, a schoolteacher and minister at a local church who asked that her name be withheld, said she sees the disparity between blacks and whites firsthand: in her school, she said, black children have lower test scores, more likely to be disciplined harshly or ordered to repeat a grade than their white peers. Outside the classroom, "people are disgruntled and they want to make some noise" about their sense of powerlessness, "but they don't know how," she said. "They fear losing their jobs, they fear being blackballed, they fear not getting the support from the other blacks. Some blacks may say, 'you're making it rough for us.' "

Back at the barber shop, Ferguson juggles a cellphone and a visitor's questions.

"I hope Obama can bring some change here," he said. "But given all I've seen, I'm not hopeful. I see the same guys doing the same things as they were doing when I left. It's as if time stood still. If anyone can shake it up, it's Obama. but it's not going to be easy dragging us into the 20th century."

There have been some black people in town who have tried to make a difference, but most end up leaving the area in frustration, he said. Despite Obama's low profile in the area - Ferguson said he hasn't seen any Democratic campaign workers, and Republicans just opened an office up the street - he believes black South Bostonians are energized.

"I talk to people coming out of the barber shop. I talk a lot about Obama. I talk positive," he said. "We have a chance to make history. We have a chance to make a difference. You never know until you try, and every vote counts. More so now than ever."