Legacy matters in the South. (Aiken, 2003; Baharanyi, Zabawa, Hill & Wimberley, 1993; Woodard, 2011). While the Civil Rights movement was a paradigm shift and a federal acknowledgment of the legislative dysfunction of Southern states pronounced, deep structural problems endured for those who remained in the Black Belt during and after the Great Migration to Northern urban centers. These residents experienced the collapse of the agricultural economy in the South caused by depressed cotton prices and numerous other factors (Aiken, 2003; Raper, 2005). Because of the South’s legacy of institutionalized racism and domestic terrorism, Jim Crow morphed, endured and confounded the collective economic viability of many in this region frightening away external investment and denying rural citizens equal opportunity to the American promise (Tomaskovic-Devey & Roscigno, 1996). Subsequently, the livelihood of citizens, especially African Americans, has persistently suffered in these eastern North Carolina agrarian counties (Beale, n.d; Tomaskovic-Devey & Roscigno, 1996). Much of the story of the South remains to be examined.
