The shoe factory closed and the supermarket lowered its iron curtain. The neighbors have also left, leaving their houses to crumble and become covered with weeds and tree shoots. Similarly, top students at Earle High School went on to graduate school elsewhere and found their hometown not attractive enough to return to.
Jaylen Smith, 18, could have left too, but when he graduated high school last spring, he decided to stay in Earle, a small town in the Arkansas delta region surrounded by farmland, where his family has lived for generations.
And he didn’t stop there, he ran for mayor and he won. He was invested in his new functions on 1is January.
overflowing optimism
“Why should I go anywhere else to be well when I could be well here in Earle, Arkansas?” he asks, installed in his mayor’s office. He can’t stand still: he signs documents and constantly answers alternately a landline and his mobile phone, which ring constantly.
Over the years, it’s mostly what the small town of Earle has lost that has come to define it: its population has grown from over 3,000 people in the 1990s to around 1,800 today. Despite everything, the city has been bathed in optimism since Jaylen Smith won the municipal elections in December.
The victory made him one of the youngest African-American mayors ever elected in the country – a matter of enormous pride for his family and supporters. Locals hope his youthful energy and sense of purpose will improve the town’s fortunes – or at least bring a supermarket back.
“It’s an asset, because he is motivated and has new ideas”, says Tyneshia Bohanon, a city councilor.
“He thinks of others, as he always has. He chose to stay and take this city to where he knows it can be.”
The supermarket project was a pillar of Jaylen Smith’s election campaign. The other pillar was the restructuring of the municipal police so that it could operate 24 hours a day. He also promised to repair the streets, demolish dilapidated buildings and raise the morale of the population.
“I am a fighter”
Jaylen Smith’s political program may seem simple, but it reflects the high price paid by the residents of Earle who decided to stay: the system
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