ROLLING FORK, Miss. – In this pocket-sized community along the cotton-field landscaped Mississippi Delta, most folks know the importance of this year’s census count.
“That’s life and death. In small town America, everything you do is predicated on federal money,” said Rolling Fork Mayor James Denson, whose town’s population is about 2,400 and is 70 percent Black.
The census is conducted once every 10 years and helps determine how millions of federal dollars are spent and how congressional and state district lines are drawn.
For the Delta, one of the poorest regions in the country, federal funding is needed for everything from infrastructure projects to preschool and feeding programs.
The 18-county region received nearly $4.8 billion in federal expenditures in 2008. That year, the South Delta School District in Rolling Fork received $1.3 million in federal money used for programs to improve student achievement. The amount was based on a formula that includes the number of pupils and census poverty estimates, among other factors.
As the U.S. Census Bureau prepares to wrap up its door-to-door count across the country next week, there are some who worry many may have been missed.
Denson found it disturbing to learn that Sharkey County, where Rolling Fork is located, is among those lagging in the Census 2010 mail participation rate. Nationally, the rate is 72 percent. It’s only 49 percent in Sharkey County. Some other Delta counties hover around the 50 percent mark. Issaquena County’s rate is 36 percent.
