A story of youth and vitality among small-town loss

Rick Rojas reported last month for the New York Times from Earle, Arkansas, population 1,831, a town in the Mississippi Delta, which has just elected an 18-year-old African-American mayor, Jaylen Smith. The story is both inspiring (because of Smith's commitment to his community) and depressing because of details of the state that Earle is already in. The photos are particularly devastating in this regard. Here's the lede:

The shoe factory closed and the supermarket pulled out. So did neighbors whose old homes were now falling apart, overtaken by weeds and trees. Likewise, the best students at Earle High School often left for college and decided their hometown did not have enough to lure them back.

Jaylen Smith, 18, could have left, too. Instead, when he graduated from high school last spring he resolved to stay put in Earle, a small city surrounded by farmland in the Arkansas Delta, where his family has lived for generations.

I was especially struck by the discussion of the town's desire to attract a grocery store. Having and keeping a grocery store has come to be marker of survival among small towns, and have been a topic of many past posts here on Legal Ruralism.

Here is NPR's coverage of Jaylen Smith's election. It makes clear that the new mayor is simultaneously a college student.