Because change comes slowly, or seemingly not at all in these overlooked communities in much of the South, history hangs heavy. The older generation remembers the struggles they endured during the Civil Rights Movement, but their children have grown up and often fled to cities or suburbs with more opportunity.
There is a crisis of the middle class, with working families falling further and further behind. But for a large number of African-Americans, they were never able to benefit even in the American dream of entering the middle class. Rather, it seems as if time has frozen.
