Insight

Wayne Flynt, a noted Southern historian and professor emeritus in the department of history at Auburn University, spoke Thursday night in Wadley at Vision 13 — a project sponsored by the Rural Alabama Initiative. The project hopes to educate area leaders on how to adapt to changes in rural areas and focus on improving local education, economy and work cooperatively for regional growth.

Beforehand, Flynt sat down with The Star and shared his views on the challenges rural Alabama faces in the global economic market.

Q: What is the main problem rural Alabama faces in adapting to an evolving world marketplace?

By age, predictably the poorest people in almost every county are below the age of 18. What does that say? What does it say when 52 percent of your students are on free or reduced-price lunches? You just don't have the labor force in Alabama to provide the kind of jobs that people are going to need.

I'm not talking about high-skilled jobs; we'll do fine there, because Auburn (University) and (the University of) Alabama will furnish them.

I'm talking about jobs as linemen for Alabama Power Co. or welders or people to work robotics at the Mercedes plant (in Vance) and the steel mill (in Mobile County). Mid-level technical people who can pass the drug test and who can count and add and do simple instructions and read manuals and operate in a modern high-tech economy or mid-tech economy. We just don't produce them.

Look at the poverty rates, especially if you look at all the kids being left behind, and they're disproportionately Hispanic and black.

Q: The numbers aren't there?

You have a 25 percent black population in 1990 and a 26 percent black population in 2000. Over the next 20 years you're looking at about a 35 percent black population. And they're the poorest and the least educated.

Q: Are there increased numbers of immigrants in the Hispanic community?

Oh, yeah, because if you don't have labor here you have to get numbers somewhere else.

It's easy enough to say these people are not wanted in the United States. But the truth of the matter is it's hard to figure out; they're people picking blackberries and blueberries and cotton.

Q: And locally in poultry and textiles and processing?

It's going to be that a larger and larger segment of the population will be Hispanic. Here again, they're the ones at the lower socioeconomic levels who struggle to get through high school, struggle to graduate. This does not position the state well in terms of the type of competition that's going to be typical in the next 50 years in America.

Q: In recent history what has caused this gap in education and training?

There are two things. You can attack it from the standpoint that we've had a school year until last year of 170 days. My grandson in Seattle goes nearly 200 days. That's more than a month longer. His schools get out at the end of June; Auburn schools get out in the middle of May.

Part of it is we haven't funded (well enough), we don't have early-intervention programs, and we're the worst state in the union in terms of early childhood programs. And that's where you are going to level the playing field for poor kids before they get to first grade. So part of it is the investment at the front end.

The second part is accountability at the back end; that is, holding schools accountable. This would be pretty much written into law with No Child Left Behind, but we really haven't taken that terribly seriously in Alabama. We just need to be a lot more accountable in what people produce, not just in terms of test scores because that's very inadequate way of judging or measuring of what kids know and are able to do. But certainly we ought to assume that kids read at grade level, do mathematics at grad level. On the national tests our kids shouldn't be at the bottom every time the test is taken

We shouldn't have one of the lowest percentages of high school graduates

Q: Do you think the education system plays a part in recruiting industry?

Yeah I do. Problem is you recruit the industry, then where do you provide the labor force?

Well that's less of a problem which may explain why more industries are locating in Alabama, because the recruitment of labor is now global recruitment of labor just like industry is global. So what you may very well see is more and more Indians, not Native Americans but Indians from India that are going to be taking those jobs you may see more Hispanics taking those jobs.

Q: So industry may come in but Alabamians may not reap the benefits?

Exactly, that's exactly right. You're going to have to have a skilled labor force, and just as a fair number of people in advance came from Detroit, more and more pep are going to be recruited outside and brought inside. And of course the best example of this would be North Carolina where the labor force is so heavily recruited from other parts of the United States. And the mixing of populations, of course, is going to have a really significant effect on future of the state, the politics of the state, the culture of the state. You're going to have more Catholics in the population just to give you an example. There's going to be less and less Methodists and Baptists and more and more Catholics. You're going to have more and more people born in other regions of the United States.

Q: Similar to what you see in Atlanta and parts of Georgia?

Oh yeah, exactly as you see in Georgia, North Carolina, Florida.

Q: Do you think Alabama has started overcoming some of its negative historical stereotypes?

I cert think we've made a lot of progress. I think you could argue the case that the Riley administration has been the closest thing the state's ever had to a new South administration and certainly that's true if you eliminate Jim Folsom Jr. and Albert Brewer, both of whom inherited the governor's office from somebody else but were never elected themselves. Riley's the only governor who even comes close to the definition of a new South governor who was actually elected by the people of Alabama. And then to be re-elected, which is pretty impressive. For instance, you have a significant decline in the level of corruption, at the executive level at least. You have a real emphasis upon school reform and additional funding for schools. You have a real emphasis on economic development and good economic development. You have a real emphasis upon accountability and education. So I think there are some really good things that have happened. I just think we've got a long way to go in terms of labor force and education.

Q: Do you think one of those steps in improving is reforming the Constitution?

Absolutely, because everything is rooted there. The racial problems in the state are still to a large extent located there, certainly the tax inequities in the state, the difference between say Lamar county up in the Northwestern part of the state or Perry county down in the black belt versus say Bibb county or Shelby county or Blount county. These are differences that are basically rooted in the tax system in the constitution. And home rule is a classic example. Over and over again as we saw in this last legislative session really important legislation for a local community get bogged down because 60 percent of the bills in the leg are considered local. We just can't get things done that are just obvious things that local people want done.

The trade district, for instance, that Prichard tried to pass in the leg session before this one, which was defeated in a statewide vote. That free trade zone was only going to affect Prichard, so why were people in Lee County or Calhoun County voting on a trade dist that would only affect Prichard, Alabama?

Q: Do you think rural initiatives are a step toward progress?

Oh absolutely.

Q: What steps would improve rural areas now?

One of the most important things is understanding what happened in the past and how we got in the mess. And then understanding what's developing in the state and especially in terms of the infrastructure you need in order to attract industry. For instance, areas like this (Wadley, Ala.) and down in the Black Belt have a real advantage in a state that has 3.5 percent unemployment because there are a lot of areas in the state where you simply don't have enough unemployed people for industry to locate because they can't find a labor force.

Q: In that case unemployment can be an advantage?

Exactly, unemployment becomes a critical advantage in a virtually full-employment economy. Then you need the infrastructure that makes people want to locate there, like schools, decent schools that really work. You've got to have highways that get goods and products, raw materials back and forth. We don't have that. You've got to have the kind of internet capacity that allows people to be able to hook up a computer and get access to sites.

Q: Do you think the current Legislature is going to have this in mind or are they more focused on the centers like Montgomery, Mobile, and Birmingham?

I think they're more centered on urban areas; rural areas have basically been ignored throughout the 20th century. I think only now with Gov. Riley's Black Belt commission have you begun to see a focus on rural areas. It's just that the Black Belt is only one region. What you need is a central strategy for rural development, not just Black Belt rural development, but all rural development because black or white, north or south, the rural problems are pretty much common problems, they revolve around education, they revolve around infrastructure, health care, job training, decent housing. I mean all of those problems are found everywhere you go in rural Alabama.

Q: What are some of the first steps leaders can take to start that process?

For one thing you develop regional strategies. A single county among 67 counties cannot solve the problems that I've been talking about. So what you need are regional coalitions where people are working together cooperatively to look at strategies for job training, education reform. And there are some wonderful examples of rural school districts that do really well.

Q: What are some examples?

Arab, for instance, Guntersville would be a wonderful example of this. Small towns but with very, very high quality education systems. And they don't spend a disproportionate amount, that is compared to Mountain Brook. That is, they spend a small amount per pupil. But at the same time they're doing some really great things with education reform and they're outperforming what you would expect based on the amount of money they spend. So, best practices in these kinds of schools. A + (Education Foundation) does this in Montgomery what they look is at best practices and how to replicate that in places that are not doing as well as they are doing. These kinds of regional strategies are really important. Re-thinking the way we do education in the state. If you're going to spend $3,000 in Lawrence County to educate a kid and $8,000 in Mountain Brook it's pretty obvious the kid in Lawrence County is not playing on a playing field that's even. So the question is without taking money from Mountain Brook and giving it to Lawrence County how can you solve the problem of educational equity funding? Which we've not done despite the fact that we've had a court ruling saying you cannot do this, it's unconstitutional. But the court cannot mandate the remedy to this. So what we've had is a decision by the court but not a remedy by the court or by the Legislature. Sooner or later somebody's going to have to say this is the way you solve the problem. Right now we have some school systems that are just as good as any in the United States and some that are as bad as any in the United States. And that's just not going to do for the future in terms of labor force.

Q: So more comprehensive, statewide solutions are necessary?

Correct, that's exactly right. And the Legislature has simply fumbled the ball, they've not done what they must do, what they've got to do if we are going to solve these problems and I would particularly point out as an example universal early childhood education for every kid in the state. That's truly critical. That's a first step.