In Lowndes County, getting free means getting infrastructure

Catherine Coleman Flowers lives in a planned suburban community in Montgomery, but her heart is in Lowndes County. She grew up in Black Belt, a small unincorporated community neighboring White Hall.“I would go walking by myself, I would pick plums, and I would walk through the corn fields,” she said. “I was a writer. So I would be inspired to write poetry by spending time by myself…now I realize I was spending time with nature back then. That wasn’t what it was called, because all we had around us was nature.”

A student activist and an Air Force Veteran, Flowers’ political education was rooted in the freedom rights movement in Lowndes County; both of her parents were heavily involved. But she was influenced just as much by the daily ethics of her local community as by their political engagement.

“Everybody had big families pretty much, my family was five children, and we would all be [on our neighbor, Ms. Shug’s porch] in the evenings listening to Ernie’s Record Mart on the radio—that’s how we kept up with music,” she said.