Source: Christina Sandidge, KINSTON FREE PRESS, 7/31/17

Tucked away in northeastern North Carolina is Bertie County —a rural, primarily black community in one of the state’s poorest areas with many of its fastest-shrinking towns. There are plenty of pothole-marked roads, mobile homes, and overgrown lots of weeds and shrubs scattered among fields of tobacco, cotton and sage. But there aren’t many stores, banks or other businesses.

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