Here are some of the highlights of Union Springs, AL.
While I was down there yesterday evening, I took the liberty of snapping some photos around town. My travelogue essay on Selma was a big hit. Hopefully, these photos will help the rest of America get a better sense of what it is like to live in a small Southern town that is 75 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic. I’ve always thought of Union Springs as a microcosm of America’s majority-minority future.
I’ve always wondered who lives in this lavender house in Union Springs. Could it be The Great Grape Ape?
A Hispanic family now live in this blighted old home. Notice the clothesline on the front porch. Lots of illegal aliens live in Union Springs and work at the Wayne Farms chicken plant. They have taken over the finest old homes in the center of town and have reduced them to this. Whenever I am driving through Union Springs, I never cease to be struck by the jarring contrast to the Eufaula Historic District.
For as long as I can remember, the Bullock County Correctional Facility is the only employer in Union Springs which always seems to be hiring.
The Penn & Seaborn Law Firm is probably the finest looking building in Union Springs. This is Myron Penn’s law office. Aside from poverty and unemployment, Democrat trial lawyers are one of the only things this town has in abundance.
If you are planning to grab a bite to eat in Union Springs, you don’t have many options these days. The abandoned Speedy Burgers/Conecuh Place has been mouldering away for as along as I can remember.
When I stopped here to get some Country Cooking, I half expected Daryl Dixon to emerge from behind the building with his crossbow trailed by a herd of zombies.
This is the Bird Dog Monument in downtown Union Springs across from the ABC liquor store. It was placed there in 1996.
This is the Confederate monument which used to be in downtown Union Springs where the Bird Dog Monument is today. Years ago, the Confederate statue was condemned as a “traffic hazard” and was uprooted and hidden away in this cemetery.
Note: Unfortunately, it was getting dark I didn’t get the chance to snap as many photos as I wanted. This is a work in progress. I will edit this essay and add some more photos on my next trip to Union Springs.
The same process of degeneration is quite advanced all through the Mississippi river Delta, whether it is North Mississippi, South Arkansas, or Northern Louisiana. Consider the towns of Tullah, La. Eudora. Ar. Greenville, MS. Helena-Weest Helena, Ar.Lake Providence , La. or Pine Bluff, Ar.
And then , of course, there is Tyson Foods and its transformation or previously all white Northwest Arkansas to an Hispanic haven. Some of the schools went from 95 % white to 65% Hispanic!
Yep.
It’s everywhere. Never been to any of those places, but I presume the Visible Black Hand of Economics has been silently working its magic there too.
“When I stopped here to get some Country Cooking, I half expected Daryl Dixon to emerge from behind the building with his crossbow trailed by a herd of zombies.”
That quip has me still laughing.
It does look like a scene out of The Walking Dead.
The Confederacy was based on the theory that the “Union” was a voluntary association of sovereign states. As for the Klan, they generally use the American flag these days.
My wife grew up in the countryside outside of Union Springs, and of the house up top she is very fond. When I told her of your reports and trips down there, after she hooted and hollered with joy for the flags having been replaced on the graves, she then quickly diverted into her memories of some people there, and this house. She is watching TV at the other end of the antebellum mansion right now, so I am out of firing range of her stories, but, I can say that she would wholeheartedly endorse your curiosity about the gothickish house with the Queen Anne style porch
Eufaula was the gem of Bullock county 100 years back, and so it is today.
I grew up in the countryside between Midway and Eufaula.
Among other places, Union Springs, Tuskegee, and Selma represent to me what I fear Eufaula could become. Unfortunately, I think that ship has already sailed. It seems like everyone I grew up with moved away from home a long time ago.
As for Montgomery where I live now, it is rapidly transforming into another Birmingham. White people are already fleeing from here across the Alabama River to Autauga and Elmore County.
Well, LLDixie, maybe you and my wife are kin…
After reading you statement of habitat evolution, I am curious : where are all the whites living, now, in Alabama?
In North Carolina, where my Peerote (disappeared little podunk place by ‘Indian Creek Baptist Church) raised wife now resides with me, the whites have not had this kind of migration. Yes, in Eastern North Carolina, where we live, there are the most negroes, and, yes, some towns are 60,70,80, and, even, 90% – like little Lewiston-Woodeville, in nearby Bertie county. But then, these places have basically been this way since the War of Northern Asininity. On the other hand, there are many towns, such as the one we live in, which is 60% white and 40% negro – and that has been stable since 1720. In some towns, even, like little Askewville in Bertie County, there are no negroes, and it is quietly known, even today, if you are black, then you ought not be seen there after sundown.
Fleeing in all directions.
Moving to Baldwin County from Mobile. Shelby County from Birmingham. Autauga County from Montgomery. From the Black Belt to almost anywhere but here.
People from Tuskegee move to Auburn and Opelika. They move from Eufaula to Dothan. It’s a colossal waste.
I see. Well, I thank you for the information.
Apparently y’all’s truth, down in them thar’ parts, is merely a confirmation of what we have here – and that is, while there are good people everywhere to be found and we have no problems doing business with each other, most of us rural Southerners prefer to live with our own kind.
Why so many have a hard time understanding this (especially city folk south or north) I can only attribute to the round the clock propaganda that blasts at them from every device.
My wife and I are very lucky to live in a town that has fought tooth and nail to preserve it’s heritage – including most (not all) of the living culture I knew as a child. Damn lucky we are, because places like this do not grow on trees.
I fought it for many years, but, I have come to believe in ‘Separate but Equal’ … especially for the negroes, who once, before the Yankee government made them their pets, owned and ran all their own businesses, churches, schools, and you name it. The Yankees have crippled the negroes, in pursuit of their abstract ideals, and we Southern whites have been left holding the bag.