Ruins of Tuskegee

OD tours the ruins of Tuskegee

Alabama

Listen up, black people.

We are about to air some of your dirtiest laundry. It is the story of what happened to Macon County, Alabama – the home of Tuskegee University, still the third blackest county in America – after you seized power there in the 1960s.

Every February, White children in American public schools are forced to learn about the glorious accomplishments of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver at Tuskegee University, the greatest black scientist of all time, as part of mandatory lessons in Black History Month.

Today, I stood in Washington Plaza on West Martin Luther King Ave, where the Wal-Mart used to be in Tuskegee, until the store was abandoned in the 1980s because of the rampant shoplifting, bad checks, and utilities fraud that was being committed there by African-Americans.

In Tuskegee, the historic capitol of the black entrepreneur in America, there isn’t a single functioning business in the deserted Washington Plaza, except for a Chinese restaurant.

Most of the downtown stores are boarded up and decaying. There are ruined and abandoned homes all over the city. The paint is falling off the antebellum mansion that is the headquarters of the downtown revitalization effort.

Tuskegee is an even bigger embarrassment to African-Americans than Detroit.

Remember, Tuskegee was the city where Booker T. Washington set out to prove that African-Americans were the equals of White people, and that black education and black enterpreneuralism could erase racial differences over time, and that “white supremacy” was based on underestimating black capabilities.

No one who drives from Auburn to Tuskegee can possibly come away from the experience with their belief in racial equality intact. Bama fans can drive from Tuscaloosa to Greensboro for a similar experience.

As we drove through Tuskegee, we kept asking ourselves: where are all the people? Where are the businesses? What do black people do here? Where do the black scientists live?

We saw a McDonald’s, a Church’s Chicken, a Burger King, and a KFC, but we didn’t see a Winn-Dixie or a Kroger, where a normal person would go grocery shopping. There were homes without cars which looked abandoned to us.

Although we didn’t see any black scientists, we did see hair and nail salons and signs distributed throughout Tuskegee that pleaded with the community to “stop the violence.”

We didn’t see anything resembling a restaurant where an Auburn or Alabama student might get something to eat. There wasn’t a single shopping plaza comparable to even one in Auburn or Tuscaloosa.

Driving through Tuskegee, you get an uncomfortable feeling that the town has suffered a kind of civic death. It was the same feeling you get when you hang out in a graveyard too long.

But Mayor Omar Neal says it’s not that easy.

The city of Tuskegee is essentially broke. It’s millions of dollars in debt that it owes now–$2-million to the IRS for two years in unpaid payroll taxes and $700,000 to a local bank.

The city council has declared a financial state of emergency.

The Mayor blames the recession and a lack of retail sales in town.

The city’s already doing what it can to get finances turned around by cutting back to 32-hour work weeks for all city employees except firefighters and policemen.

They’re also not hiring any new employees.

Who killed Tuskegee?

The Confederate statute in the town square, as well as the surrounding churches, the older homes, and the design of the main street business district, suggest that Tuskegee used to be a much more important place and had a real economy in the recent past, and that there used to be a White presence here.

Something went horribly wrong in Tuskegee.

It wasn’t Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver. Their successors seem to have destroyed the city. The epilogue of the “Civil Rights Movement” in Alabama, starting in Tuskegee, but moving onto other cities, is a story that hasn’t yet been told.

It is time to correct that deficit.

If African-Americans were going to succeed anywhere in America through education and entrepreneuralism and civil rights reform, it would have been in Tuskegee, where “racism” and “white supremacy” were defeated in the 1960s, and where Macon County has thrived under black rule for forty years now.

A glance at the present of Tuskegee is a glimpse into the future of Black Run America. Watch the “Life After People” videos below. It is like “Tuskegee After White People” right now.

Note: The only thing that sustains Tuskegee on life support today is state and federal spending.



About Hunter Wallace 12380 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

15 Comments

  1. For New Life, Blacks in [New York] City Head to South – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/nyregion/many-black-new-yorkers-are-moving-to-the-south.html

    “The economic downturn has propelled a striking demographic shift: black New Yorkers, including many who are young and college educated, are heading south.

    New York has lost some of its cachet for black people,” Professor Crew said. “During the Great Migration, blacks went north because you could find work if you were willing to hustle. But today, there is less of a struggle to survive in the South than in New York. Many blacks also have emotional and spiritual roots in the South. It is like returning home.

    “My grandmother’s generation left the South and came to the North to escape segregation and racism,” she said. “Now, I am going back because New York has become like the old South in its racial attitudes.”

    Ms. Ross said she had experienced some culture shock in the South, and had been surprised to find that blacks tended to self-segregate, even in affluent neighborhoods.

    She said that the South — not New York — was now home.

    “People in Georgia have a different mind-set and life is more relaxed and comfortable here,” she said. “There is just a lot more opportunity.”

  2. “Where do the black scientists live?”

    Funniest line ever. They live in the highly imaginative minds of Hollywood movie producers I guess.

  3. They are moving to Atlanta, not Tuskegee.

    The cities which are 365Black like Tuskegee, Union Springs, and Camden are losing population. Black people have no reason to move to Tuskegee. There is nothing going on there but tumbleweeds blowing through the empty streets.

  4. While blacks from the North are moving to the South, blacks who live in the parts of the South they have already ruined, such as Macon County or Lowndes County, are also moving and trying to find Whitopias.

  5. With some exceptions, reddit is mostly composed of young white males in the lower income bracket (though you also have a knack for pissing off the non-white users). I remember a few months back I posted one HBD article about tribes, really not that controversial, they came out in full force with downvotes and insults. They never even mentioned the actual content involved.

  6. Why do you write ridiculous things like, “listen up, black people”? It’s pretty obvious that the vast majority of your readership isn’t black. It’s a lazy rhetorical trope. Look – I get your point. You are pointing out facts. But your writing style leaves a lot to be desired. You sound like a sullen adolescent boy screaming for attention.

  7. “Now, I am going back because New York has become like the old South in its racial attitudes.”

    Truth starting to slip out, zero tolerance policing = code for the constant harassment of black people till they leave DWL cities like New York.

  8. Having lived and worked all throughout the USA, much of Canada and Europe, I am confident that given the right opportunities, education and encouragement, the black American community will eventually do well. What is a far larger issue for the USA, but for some reason, the people are completely ignorant of the threat, is the Asian Indian presence. They form the second largest number of illegals, they will bring their own version of racism which black people will find even more oppresive than that put forward by whites, they will find schools hijacked, pimping by blacks will be seen as small time, they will encourage slums and even the whites are going to find they are strangers in their own land. Black people will work hard, do take risks and as long as they are treated fairly, are honourable. None of these attributes are applicable to Asian Indians.

  9. I took my family on a four day trip through Alabama to visit some historic locations. I had Tusgekee (air field & George Washington Carver Museum) on my must see list and happened upon the Tusgekee historic downtown area. Visiting Tusgekee was like going back in time 50 years. My 8 year old daughter studied Mr. Carver in school so that is the reason I had this on my list to open my daughters mind to diversity. I also knew the history of the Tusgekee airmen so I wanted to see the airfield and museum. I was very disappointed that there was not a person to be seen and all of the business stores in the square had no weapons allowed signs in their windows. I have never seen so many of these types of signs so highly concentrated that it kept me from getting the family out of the car and walking around.

    Tusgekee was quite a contrast to visiting Auburn.

    Tusgekee has obviously been abandoned for a variety of reasons. I find it ironic that there was a lone confederate soldier statue in the town square.

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