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Sunday, December 6, 2009
Thirty years ago, Maurice Clemmons and his uncle and friends ran down these streets in Marianna, Ark., just a few blocks from where he was born. Ray Clemmons, his uncle, said that, as boys, they played hide-and-seek and swung on vines in the woods that border much of the town. The narrow blacktop roads are host to a patchwork of trim brick ramblers and dilapidated shacks in one of the poorest counties in America. In 2007, nearly one of every three Lee County families lived below the poverty level, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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