What does poverty in America look like to you?

(photo of Davis Bottom in Lexington, KY, used with permission, by Steven T. Moga)

My man and I drove through Kentucky today, left Lexington at noon and pulled into Nashville tonight at 6pm Central time.  It was a lot of rural driving, and at one point I exclaimed, "I'm having such an experience right now!" Meaning, wow, I'm seeing and thinking about so many new places, places I never see - and as such, don't know how to think about.  Especially compared to what I know from my cloistered Northeast life.

We spent some time in Russellville, KY late in the afternoon, population 7,275.  There is a neighborhood there known as Black Bottoms, even today.  The city is in the process of honoring it via museums and historic preservation.  The preserved small 19th century brick houses were lovely; the surrounding neighborhood was decidedly mixed.  Poor drainage - rough ditches carved out alongside the small paved roads, such that residents front walks begin as individual bridges to the front door.  Lots of wet open land - it's been raining on and off, and the water accumulates - and the houses laid out somewhat along a grid of streets, but also in a bit of a hodge podge fashion, likely oweing to unusual and unregulated settlement patterns for African-Americans on land local whites didn't use.

The houses are a range of quality, some in real rough shape, including some vacant, and others well maintained and homey, inviting.  There are neighborhood churches and the Board of Education is at one end of the neighborhood.

Like the rural towns that follow Russellville to the Kentucky-Tennessee border, this neighborhood pattern of development and living I am also not used to.  Or am I?

My mother grew up in Franklin Hill public housing in Mattapan, which was on a hill across the street from Franklin Park.  Diagonal and down across Blue Hill Ave was the Franklin Field projects, developed shortly after Franklin Hill on wet, low-lying land prone to flooding.  My mom remembers the projects as more or less one big neighborhood growing up, and included in those memories are warnings against flooding and wet basements, laundry rooms, etc.

Franklin Field and Franklin Hill are majority non-white now, home to African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans and Latin@s.  In Russellville, 19% of residents are African-American; about 50% of them live in poverty (compared to only 20% of whites).  In Boston, over 40% of residents are black or Hispanic (census code for Latin@) or mixed-race; more than one quarter of these Bostonians live in poverty (compared to less than 10% of whites).  It's not so easily "white America" vs. "black America" in minority-majority, ethnic Boston, but the relative poverty and inequality unfolding along our "color line" sure is similar to Russellville.

But when I look at the urban and semi-rural poverty in Kentucky, I see this.  When I think about poverty in Boston - and this is my default view from growing up here and visiting my relatives -  I see this.  And this.

The photos and links here look awfully different to me visually, yet how different or similar are people's lived experiences in these places?  What do you think?  Or know?  What does poverty in America look like and feel like to you?

(Photo of Mary Ellen McCormack projects in South Boston, courtesy of the Boston Housing Authority website.  My grandmother and various uncles lived here until several years ago.  This photo does the place justice!)