Special Report

To work — to become lasting art — a quilt must have a theme. It must have a unifying element that pulls its squares and triangles and colors together into a working, vibrant bit of something.

The equation of bringing the Black Belt in balance with the rest of Alabama starts with concrete, steel and asphalt extending out from Interstate 85 and stretching to Mississippi.

Many people interviewed for this series of stories on the Black Belt bring up the lack of infrastructure as the instrument of its unraveling. Specifically, they label the need to extend I-85 as the most concrete example of problem-solving in the Black Belt.

But again, to build that interstate means not only marshalling economic resources, but also developing the political leadership and the leadership in the communities, they and others argue.

Often, that simply means being pragmatic.

Black Belt politicians say any road must go through Washington. The senior senator from Alabama, Richard Shelby, is a powerful man in Washington, they reason. If anyone can deliver an interstate highway extension through the Black Belt, it is him, many here argue.

“That’s the kind of person you want to talk to; he’s the man you want to have a good relationship with,” said Ed Daniel, the former mayor of Marion, in Perry County, who long has been a booster of the Black Belt.

Daniel argues that the local leadership, members of his county’s County Commission, as well as most of the delegation to the Statehouse in Montgomery, gives Shelby the snub because he is, unlike nearly every politician in the Black Belt, a Republican.

Referring to one local politician, Daniel said, “You have to be a fool to speak out against Richard Shelby if you are from around here,” he said. “The one man who can extend I-85 is Shelby and you are going to refuse to meet with the man? Well, that’s just stupid.”

Another move to try to come up with solutions to the problems was launched in August 2004 when Gov. Bob Riley, a Republican elected in 2002, created the Black Belt Action Commission. As co-chairs of the agency, he chose perhaps two people who could not have been more different: state Sen. Hank Sanders, a dedicated Democrat and powerful black attorney from Selma, and Kay Ivey, the state’s Republican treasurer and refined white woman from Camden in Wilcox County.

By nearly all accounts, they worked well together in working with 13 committees that oversee issues ranging from education to promoting tourism. The commission, however, is an advisory body and, as is the case with a lot of state agencies in Alabama, is in want of funding. In this case it has no funding at all.

Still, it has presented a path forward on a number of issues, serving, if nothing else, as a starting point.

Clearly, however, the role of the commission, which among other things serves, as Riley calls it, as a clearinghouse, has helped to bring about positive changes.

Some 1,300 new jobs were created between August 2004 and August 2006, a combined investment of some $100 million. Reading scores for fourth-graders rose, and dropout rates fell. More computers were placed in public schools. Thousands of children were given visual screening, and steps were taken to expand the number of dialysis clinics in the area.

The greatest success of the action commission, however, is that it seems to have brought about a kind of connectedness that has been absent in the region.

“The commission has brought people together,” said Carol Zippert who serves as the chairwoman of the Culture and Youth Committee. “There are people talking now who have never talked before, and as a result, collaborations are emerging.”

Zippert detailed a relationship that her committee has forged with the Alabama State Council on the Arts, which has resulted in some $150,000 in grant money going to many different communities in the Black Belt.

“That money is helping to fund festivals and art classes for youth, dance, you name it,” she said from her newspaper office in Eutaw.

For Zippert, supporting and developing the arts is the key to the salvation of the Black Belt. Throughout a long conversation she touches on what the region has to offer, including the quilts of Gee’s Bend, the works of the Tin Man.

Quoting from the motto of the Black Belt Community Foundation, where she also serves as the chair, she said: “We take what we have to make what we need.”

“You see this is what we do with quilts, with rusted pieces of metal,” she said. “We use what we have. Even poor people, people who struggle in low-income jobs, it is important to find a way to celebrate life with art.”

John Fleming’s work in the Black Belt in 2006 was made possible by funding from the Alicia Patterson Foundation.