Back to Building the Capacity of Rural
People and PlacesBy Michal Smith-Mello
From Reclaiming Community, Reckoning with Change
pp. 61-66, published 1995
Located in the rural northeastern corner of what has historically been one of the nation’s poorest states, Lee County, Mississippi, held the dubious distinction of being home to the poorest of the poor in the mid-1940s. To make matters worse, its principal city, Tupelo, had been virtually destroyed by a tornado just a few years earlier. Today, Lee County boasts the second highest per capita income in Mississippi, one that nearly parallels the U.S. average, and the energy of an upward spiral of development is almost palpable. Tupelo has become an internationally recognized magnet for industrial investment and an exemplar of rural development that is radiating economic benefits deeply into surrounding rural areas.
The roots of Tupelo’s transformation can be traced to the efforts of visionary newspaper publisher George McClean who carefully cultivated broad engagement in the work of lifting this rural Mississippi delta region out of the ruin left by the swift path of a tornado and the slow destructiveness of joblessness and poverty. As University of Mississippi Professor Vaughn Grisham, who heads the McClean Institute of Community Development at the University of Mississippi, observes, McClean knew that all he had was people and the relationships they might form. Tupelo had its share of well-connected leaders with links to Washington, D.C., Jackson, and other points of power, but they lacked leadership. From New England-style town meetings to one-on-one meetings with business community leaders, in which he painstakingly explained that as long as customers were poor, businesses could not be expected to make money, McClean gradually leveraged enough civic engagement to create an intoxicating effect. Working toward shared goals, the people of Tupelo began to change economic and social circumstances in their own community, and over the long term, which is where development initiatives can and must be focused. Extraordinary gains were made (Grisham, 1994).
Not surprisingly, the Tupelo of today is home to remarkable internal capacity. The work of development appears to be almost wholly independent of state efforts, a product of broad consensus, local vision, and empowered firms, grassroots organizations, and citizens. Community leaders proudly note that Tupelo’s high-tech high school was planned by its students. Like its sprawling new high school, which boasts lasers and robotics, Tupelo’s development initiatives are attuned to the larger context of global markets, technological advancement, and organizational change.
While industrial recruitment is central to the work of the Community Development Foundation (CDF), which has worked to advance regional goals set by its governing board since its charter in 1948, a blending of the three "waves" of development policies is evident. "Third wave" strategies that focus of how development is conducted are key, but CED recommends blending this focus on process with first wave industrial recruitment strategies and second wave assistance to business, industry, and entrepreneurs (CED, 1993). Tupelo’s approach to development suggests that third wave processes might have been invented in this most unlikely of places. CDF is now about the business of meeting the goals of its fifth 10-year strategic plan, the first of which was prepared in 1946. Each successive plan has outlined goals for raising regional quality of life. Every year, CDF’s performance is measured by its ability to realize annual goals that extend well beyond the recruitment of industry. And significant leverage with the private sector has enabled CDF to broaden its impact.
Importantly, the first plan, for which city merchants began raising funds during World War II, emphasized the economic interdependencies between Tupelo and outlying farms and communities. "This mutual interest of town and country has universal recognition," observed the completed 1946 report to Tupelo leaders. The first and all subsequent plans have stressed a regional or multi-community approach to developing the economy, one that recognizes and emphasizes rural and urban interdependencies. Unlike many rural areas throughout the United States, this corner of Mississippi has successfully retained its farm and rural population.
Strategic long-term vision is at the root of this Mississippi development success story. The architects of the region’s renaissance, for example, do not believe that a rural economy can be built on service industries. Nor are tourism and recreation development viewed as a viable development options. Tourism, observes Harry Martin, who has served as CDF director for nearly 40 years, creates a "sub-class" of under-paid workers. "Two people are doing well at that hotel," Martin gestures toward Tupelo’s newest inn. "They own it" (Martin, 1995).
Because CDF’s vision is that of building an economy on the strength of industrial payrolls, industrial recruitment is central to its strategy. But, unlike many southern communities, Tupelo is looking for givers, not takers, industries that want to enrich community and achieve higher levels of performance, profit, and prosperity. Those who are unwilling to give are essentially excluded from receiving the services of CDF, which are available to industries new and old. While new industries may be extended tax exemptions, they are limited to 10 years. From its land bank, CDF also makes property available at competitive prices but never gives it away.
A true measure of its success, the people of Tupelo and surrounding areas have become richer because of the extraordinary stock of social capital community leaders have cultivated. "Sharing sessions," launched in the 1950s, bring labor, transportation, and plant managers together to share ideas, information and resources. Today, individuals and corporate citizens, new and old alike, are simply expected to give to their community, to participate in its enrichment. In doing so, they continue a long and distinguished tradition that began with the leadership of McClean, who first engaged local merchants and area citizens in a dialogue about their community’s future and raised funds to plan for it.
Over the decades, CDF has executed five 10-year plans. Today, Martin describes the modern CDF facility on Main Street as a "widget factory" that creates payrolls. "There are no back-patters in this building" (Martin, 1995). Instead, this "custodian of the future" is home to a 16-member team of professionals, including a trained city planner, a grants writer, and a three-member marketing team. A high-tech operation that mirrors the goals it sets for the community at large, CDF houses sophisticated computer equipment, CAD/CAM capabilities, a full printing press, and video production capabilities.
Supported by an annual budget of $1.5 million, provided nearly equally by local contributors, grants, and fees for services, CDF’s goals for 1995 alone include creating 2,500 new jobs, 1,000 of them in manufacturing; encouraging "world-class skills and technological training" at every educational level; conducting a comprehensive inventory of the tax structure; and promoting community beautification, the development of moderately priced housing, and regional infrastructure.
The foundation’s role is described as that of facilitator or change agent, empowering others to contribute and participate more fully in the community. "We are not managers," Martin observes. Instead, CDF provides technical services, marketing and public relations support for local organizations; awards small grants—usually matched—that have grown more than half a dozen non-profit organizations and launched community beautification efforts and a host of other development activities. Local school districts are also strongly supported by CDF.
CDF is also remarkably apolitical. While some political leaders serve on CDF’s private sector-dominated board and help shape the development agenda, they are ex-officio members, prohibited from voting by strong conflict of interest provisions in state ethics laws. Unlike many professional development agencies, CDF disdains the usual obligatory visit with public officials. Essentially, they are excluded from the recruitment process altogether. Instead, it is a highly professional, strictly confidential process—not even CDF board members know the identity of prospects. While direct citizen participation in luring industries is precluded in the interest of maintaining professionalism, annual and long- range plans that inform recruitment are shaped in a participatory process.
Importantly, CDF’s 10-year plans, as well as other strategic initiatives, are based on extensive research conducted by academics and consultants who carefully examine interrelated economic forces and help the region anticipate them. At present, CDF is aggressively recruiting professionals—attorneys, accountants, and environmental consultants—to fill an identified need of the growing manufacturing base. The recent emphasis on residential housing is an effort to address a growing labor shortage that analysts believe is tied to inadequate housing. Consequently, the community is aggressively working to attract families and promote home ownership through planned housing developments. Development of a regional mall and a huge furniture mart, where new products are showcased to buyers from around the nation, are the products of studies that determined need and capacity.
CDF planners know where every commercial, industrial, and residential site will be for the next 40 years. In anticipation, the foundation purchases options on planned industrial sites, enabling it to sell to prospective industries or developers at a fair price; conducts all pre-environmental work; and supplies and markets utilities to new industries. And, while it shuns management of any local projects that might divert the organization from the business of making jobs, CDF provides seed money and promotional assistance to facilitate community projects and organizations.
In spite of its long history in the business of making jobs, CDF has exhibited a remarkable ability to change and adapt. When one of its initial ventures collapsed as a consequence of a scientific development, community leaders did not look back. Today, Harry Martin recounts the transition with a rare appreciation of the power of discovery and change, and the good that can indeed come from it.
While we look to Tupelo for transferable ideas, the people of rural Kentucky ultimately must shape their own future, just as the citizens of Lee County, Mississippi, did. Tupelo’s experience, however, is instructive. Among other things, it underscores the need to nurture broad civic engagement in the development process, to bring a long-term, future-oriented focus to the work of development, to plan strategically for a future of rising prosperity, to build the capacity to compete and prosper within our communities, to cultivate individual, organizational and corporate leadership, to enrich the development process with knowledge and expertise, and to manage change effectively. While communities of the Commonwealth clearly must put their "made-in-Kentucky" stamp on the work of rural development, the lessons of Tupelo’s experience are likely to endure. They can inform the work of rural development throughout Kentucky and increase the likelihood of increased prosperity.
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