High Hopes Add to Burden For Obama

[kentuck]

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HOLLANDALE, Miss. -- Helen Perkins can feel the worries of her neighbors -- and their expectations. "The things that some of our people hope from Obama -- more help, better homes in a hurry -- sound like they're hoping for a miracle from God," she says.

At 63, Perkins lives in Hollandale, a town of about 2,900 in the Mississippi Delta, historically a fertile territory for big agriculture and bigger misery. Chronically poor, largely African American, loyally Democratic in an otherwise very red state, the Delta is a land where deprivation and diminished dreams are as indigenous as cotton. Poverty levels, obesity and diabetes rates, teenage pregnancy statistics, failing businesses: All the bad indices are woefully high in the Delta.

Not far from the site of the first of Hollandale's many collapsed houses is a sign at the town border: "Welcome to Hollandale: A town preparing for the future today." For many expectant people here, that future will turn on Barack Obama.

On Election Day, Hollandale went for Obama in a landslide, giving him 78 percent of its vote, or 1,279 votes to John McCain's 367. A former mayor of the town, and the first African American to hold the position, Perkins never had seen voting lines so long at the Hollandale municipal hall, where more than 100 residents lined up before the polls opened at 7 a.m. "There were some people who'd never voted because they'd never seen the point in voting," she said. "Barack has made them believe; Barack has given them hope."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/18/AR2009011802326.html?hpid=topnews