A land with a large cattle industry; few jobs; a history of colonialism and struggling schools sees a decades-long population collapse.
Rural Alabama? Yes.
But also, mid-century Ireland.
I kept thinking of that country across the Atlantic as I read our series last week on rural depopulation.
Needless to say, the Emerald Isle and Alabama’s Black Belt are very different places. Ireland did not experience the authoritarian destruction of slavery and segregation, the key reason the Black Belt is so much smaller than it once was. Alabama never had a religious institution that dominated (and often poisoned) daily life as the Irish Catholic Church did.
Yet the causes of demographic decline in both are similar enough that I think it’s worth looking at how Eire reversed it. At a minimum, it could give Alabama’s leaders some ideas for preserving the Black Belt. If they’re willing to think big.
The Great Famine of the late 1840s sparked a massive population decline in Ireland that went on for over a century. As the journalist Fintan O’Toole writes in “We Don’t Know Ourselves,” a history of modern Ireland, the population of what became the republic (everything that’s not Northern Ireland) was 6.5 million in 1841. By 1961, it was 2.8 million, and the “idea of disappearance,” as O’Toole writes, hung over the country throughout the 1950s.
The rural Black Belt, which had almost 491,000 people in 1940, had just over 333,000 in 2020. Some counties have seen Ireland-scale losses: Perry County, about an hour south of Tuscaloosa, is less than a third of the size it was eight decades ago.
In both cases, lack of opportunity pushed people out. Unemployment in the western Black Belt, though not quite as bad as it once was, is still higher than average. Wilcox County reported an 8% jobless rate in November, almost four times the state’s.
Black Belt schools are seeing declines, too. Enrollment in Sumter County Schools is 41% lower today than it was in 2014. In Perry, it’s 45% lower. That makes it challenging for districts to hire teachers and forces schools to close.
When people living in the Black Belt say that it’s hard to find quality jobs where they live, I hear my family history.
My mother left Ireland when she was 17 years old. There were no jobs. There was no chance of higher education. There was nothing to keep her. My grandfather strongly encouraged her departure. Four of his 10 children permanently settled abroad.
And that was par for the course. As O’Toole writes, four out of every 10 people in my mother’s age cohort left Ireland by the time they turned 20.
To put this in perspective, imagine going to a high school graduation where 500 18-year-olds are set to receive diplomas. The graduates sit in 25 rows, with 20 students per row. The first graduate walks up to the stage; takes a diploma; walks through a door on the right of the stage and gets into a car headed to Canada, Mexico, or Spain, never to return.
Every other student in the first 10 rows does the same thing until there’s an enormous empty space in the front of the auditorium and a sense of unease among those who remain.
So how do you prevent those kids from walking out that door?
Reasons to stay
Ireland eventually reversed its demographic collapse. Last April, the country had about 5.2 million people, a shade over Alabama’s 5.1 million. Several things contributed to that.
Irish politicians in the late 1950s shifted from protectionist economic policies, aiming to attract diverse businesses and foreign investment. It was a multi-pronged approach, including tax breaks and openness to immigration.
Alabama already offers tax breaks to businesses – the effectiveness of which we can debate – but it could and should do more to encourage immigration. Immigrant communities boost economies and revitalize stagnant areas. Immigrants have reversed population decline in other cities.
Ireland also revitalized its education system. The country didn’t offer the equivalent of a free high school education until 1967, long after my mother left. Today Ireland has generally strong educational attainment, particularly among 25- to 34-year-olds.
Population loss is slamming Black Belt schools, but the state’s tight limits on local property taxes aren’t helping. Those hurt education all over Alabama. But they’re especially harmful to rural districts, which generally lack commercial development and a broad tax base. Fund the schools and you will give people a reason to stay.
There’s so much else. Medicaid expansion. Better roads. Broadband programs that don’t depend on the goodwill of private companies.
But the most important thing is giving the Black Belt a voice.
Ireland has been a sovereign nation for over 100 years. From the moment of independence, it extended the franchise to nearly everyone living there. There are plenty of policy failures in Ireland’s history. And examples of unstatesmanlike behavior. But the political system, by and large, reflects the will of the nation.
In Jim Crow Alabama, the vast majority of people in the Black Belt weren’t just denied the vote; their representatives came from a tiny white class that prospered off the misery they created for Black residents.
That’s changed since the Voting Rights Act. But the Black Belt still struggles to get anything more than lip service from Montgomery. The new 2nd Congressional District could give residents a bigger say in decision-making. But Alabama’s leaders need to show a real commitment to addressing the issues there.
This is a lot to ask of a state government that takes pride in its callousness.
But elevating the Black Belt will elevate Alabama. Improving schools will keep talented people in the region. Talented people will create jobs and art and institutions drawing more people in. The whole state will benefit.
We owe it to those communities to reverse the long decline. And in Ireland, we have an example of how to do it.
This article was published by Alabama Reflector.
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