The numbers tell a disconcerting story: Columbia's population down 8.3 percent since 2010, Tylertown, 8.8 percent, Prentiss 11.2 percent and so on.
Communities in southwest Mississippi are losing population at a greater rate than the state, which has gained population at a 0.56 percent rate over the past seven years.
And, of course, Mississippi is losing ground to the rest of the country with that paltry growth rate, creating a very real possibility that the state will lose one of its four congressional seats following the 2020 census.
No doubt the oil industry plays a part in the population loss in this region. It's been depressed for several years due to low oil prices, which are starting to go back up. While that's bad for drivers, it's good for people who work in the oil business.
But the main factor seems to be young people no longer want to live in rural areas. And not even places like Jackson that would be considered mid-sized cities on a national scale are attracting young people. Rather the growth is all centered in the massive hubs like Birmingham, Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas, Denver, etc.
That makes it difficult to grow businesses or other organizations in small towns.
This trend is all very troubling to me. I suppose I’m something of an outlier among my generation, the much-loathed Millennials. I have no desire to live in a big city. The traffic is a nightmare, and the culture tends to be moving in those places towards the godless, European attitude that already dominates on our East and West coasts. It’s the kind of atmosphere where more men with those unkempt beards that for some reason are stylish right now despite looking like a bear that awoke early from hibernation are sipping craft beers on Saturday night than attending church on Sunday morning. That’s not the kind of place I want to raise two young children. But it seems it’s the direction the rest of our world is heading.
I also work at a newspaper and am passionate about that profession at a time when circulations are down, and people constantly demean this career as outdated and both sides, liberal and conservative, from the president on down attack journalists as the “enemies of the people.” It tends to wear on you to deal with all of those negative trends at the same time. I dread answering the phone because it’s never good news on the other end.
Should you fight that and try to make things work in a rural area or go with the flow and just move to a booming urban center? I say “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” as the poet Dylan Thomas put it.
I often think about the prophet Jeremiah, all alone in the bottom of a pit, sinking in the mud, after being cast there by his own people because he told them a message from God that they would be overthrown and dragged off to Babylon (Jeremiah 38:6). Jeremiah’s whole career as a prophet, if you want to think about it that way, was marked by rejection of those he spoke to and suffering by the nation of Israel. Yet I would not consider him a failure by any means; rather he was a success because he continued doing what was right even during difficulty.
We in rural areas must all adopt the attitude of Jeremiahs. That means boosting the things that make us stand out against big cities: Faith, a sense of community, lower cost of living and more. Eventually the tide is going to turn with what’s considered cool, and the Millennials or their descendants will start moving back to the country. Communities that remain strong in the meantime will be ready to welcome them.
We can all do our own small part to make Columbia one of those places. As the former U.S. senator from Mississippi Leroy Percy said, “I guess a man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able — always remembering the results will be infinitesimal — and to attend to his own soul.”
Reach Editor/Publisher Charlie Smith at csmith@columbianprogress.com.
