(ominous music) - Clarksdale: a good town.

Like every other community in the Delta it's, I call it impoverished.

(birds chirping) There's a lot of things that are not here, that you can get in other places.

(car engine roaring) (birds chirping) The Blues and the tourism, it makes up for a lot of that.

(car engine roaring) But still, there's a- it's just a slow Delta, town that, trying to hang on.

(pensive music) (bright upbeat music) (hot oil spattering) (soft piano music) (hot oil spattering) (paper rustling) - My name is Lanell Stewart.

(paper rustling) I'm a person that- I love to cook.

So, I love to shop for food.

And I'm always looking out for something different.

(hot oil spattering) I like to experiment with dishes.

You know, I might say, well, you know, what I wanna see, what can I do to this chicken today to make it different than what I had two days ago or whatever?

So I just love to flip recipes around, add my own touch.

(spoon clinking) (bowl lid clinking) I love hot food.

You know, I mean, when I say hot, I mean, with spices, hot with spices.

And I use all- any herb there is, I probably have it in my kitchen.

Maybe I might be missing something, but not many, not many.

(hot oil spattering) I've mostly been cooking my whole life.

(spoon tinkling) I worked in a restaurant and for 42 years, (spoon tinkling) so I learned to cook there.

Of course, I had a lot of errors, so I just kept practicing and practicing until I got it to where I want.

(bowl lid clinking) And I just love to cook for my family.

- Yes, we are home, homebodies, so to speak.

We love to cook at home, you know, like to feed our families at home.

We like to sit down with our families and have a meal, home cooked meal.

- It's a social thing.

You watch a football game.

There's gonna be good food there.

Relatives are coming in the town.

You, you know, you're gonna have food there.

So it is such an important part of our culture.

Like everything that we do that involves more than one person.

(Sanford laughing) Like if we're gonna have three people together, there's gonna be food there.

Being able to have access to high quality food and being able to cook and prepare food and enjoy the fellowship of others.

That's something that's really important.

And you know, depending on where you live, what neighborhood you live in, what community you live in, Like, that could be a real challenge.

(birds chirping) (upbeat music) - Clarksdale has been a great town for me, a small town however.

(soft piano music) (car engine revving) And growing up, we had many, many stores to shop from.

There were stores on Issaquena, all over Clarksdale.

But, I've seen a lot of change.

Now, yes, we don't have a lot.

(soft piano music) - We don't have the movies and the bowling alleys and you know, simple things like that were here when I first moved to Clarksdale, but they're no longer here.

- When we first moved here, we had a neighborhood grocery store that was right around the block from my house.

And we could tell our kids, we could give them a shopping list.

They would drive to the grocery store on their bikes.

And the person in the grocery store knew our family, knew them.

Over time that grocery store had to shut down.

And then we started shopping at Kroger.

(wind whooshing) - Kroger was such a giant in Clarksdale for the food.

(light elevator music) The shelves were always full.

Kroger was this the store that you could go in and find items that you could not find any place else.

They were well supplied.

You were able to shop full for all of your groceries.

(light elevator music) - We were there at least once a week.

And I would usually run in just to pick up something.

If I wanted to make dinner, if my wife wanted to make dinner.

We would just run in and get what we needed and come out.

- Each employee was just like family.

The whole Kroger family was like family to each one of us.

- There were members of our church who were there.

There were former students of mine work working there.

(shoppers chattering) You know, you really build relationships.

So when you walk around the same supermarket, you see the same people.

Like you have to say hello to them.

You know, there was one guy who worked in the butcher department and every time I saw him, we would just have conversations about our favorite football teams.

It was bad to lose, lose something that you're familiar with.

(soft piano music) - As the years passed, Kroger has moved away.

And that has really been a jolt to Clarksdale.

(soft piano music) - Kroger left Clarksdale more than a year ago, causing prices on groceries to skyrocket at other smaller stores.

(soft piano music) Fox 13's Tom Dees, is live in Clarksdale tonight.

Tom, we've seen what happens in a community when a Kroger leaves.

- When Kroger closed, it was more than just a grocery store closing.

We knew the people that work there and it was a very emotional thing.

- It was something that I took very personally because I have grown up with Kroger my entire life.

I guess there's a brand loyalty there.

Like, this is the supermarket that, you know, I remember sitting in the basket and my dad and my mom pushing me around and got to do the same thing with my girls.

So, you know, it was sad to lose...

Lose a supermarket that I've grown up with.

And then you look at a larger sense, like here's the supermarket that's been serving this community for decades.

And then you see it close.

And it seemed like it was so abrupt.

(mower engine roaring) - Most people say, "well, what's the big deal?"

But it does, it has an impact.

(birds chirping) We've got a lot of elderly people here.

There's a lot of health issues in the Delta.

And that comes along with the poverty.

- You know, there's such a correlation between the quality of the food that you eat and your health outcomes.

And we're in an area where our health outcomes are not where they need to be.

What we eat is so much more important and you're not supposed to eat as much fried foods and not as much processed foods.

We keep telling people like, "You need to eat more fruits and vegetables."

But if you don't have access to high quality food, then like, what are you supposed to do?

- Most people think that food insecurity is a poor people problem, right?

Like they think that it's only about poor people.

And often in our state, we tend to blame the poor when people struggle with resources and that's not necessarily the case.

If I live in a food desert and I have money, there still might be a possibility that I'm food insecure because of the fact that I live in a rural community that doesn't have access to food, right?

Like that doesn't have a grocery store.

So it's not just about having money.

It's about having the access.

(ominous music) - Our population now probably is around maybe 15,000.

Whereas when I grew up here, we were looking at 20 to 25,000.

(soft piano music) - In talking to city and county leaders here in Coahoma County, they tell me the two things that people struggle with the most here, the cost of groceries and the cost of gas.

(ominous music) - Many of the families have moved away because there is, no longer convenient places for them to shop.

(car engine revving) We do have a few, what we call mom-and-pop stores.

But they are not going- you know, with the big families, mom-and-pop stores are not working out for us.

- I feel fortunate that, you know, we do have some local options yet at the same time if you don't live in those communities, like your access is still gonna be limited.

And they're small.

So they don't have all of the items that you're used to seeing in like, a major national chain.

I think some of that has improved, but there've been some moments where like, "where's the milk?"

(Sanford laughing) Like, how do you not have milk?

(ominous music) If you are like, middle-class, you can afford to go shopping in Cleveland, go shopping in DeSoto County, go shopping in Oxford.

But if you don't have the means to travel, like it can be pretty challenging.

(ominous music) - When you think about food insecurity from a location perspective, we often talk about the term food deserts.

(car engine roars) In rural communities, when you think about people who live in a food desert, these are typically people who have to travel 10 miles or more to get to a supermarket or a grocery store.

(Wind whooshing) - I'm standing on Highway 49 going this way.

And then there's 61 Bypass down here.

Folks have been driving the 35 plus minutes.

It takes to get from here to Batesville, Mississippi.

And then they've also been driving about the 35 to 40 minutes it takes to get from here to Cleveland, Mississippi, just to get deals on groceries.

(soft piano music) - Oh yeah, we have many that do not have transportation.

That's what you're speaking of, right?

- [Interviewer] Uh-huh.

- They do not have trans- oh yeah we are many.

- And that's just in Clarksdale.

When you expand outside of Clarksdale and look at some of our other communities like Jonestown, Friar's Point, Bobo, Sherod.

Like your access is extremely limited at that point, especially if you don't have access to reliable transportation.

- So, as far as our food, yes, it affects our food industry a lot with Kroger moving away.

(hot oil spattering) - There's a level of this diminishment that happens, right.

People aren't able to thrive, like they would if they were able to access food.

So when you think about communities that don't have supermarkets or communities that don't have grocery stores, then we see people who struggle to have a good quality of life.

Because they can't eat the foods that they need in order to sustain themselves.

(hot oil spattering) - You gotta have a place to get, get the meals and get your food.

And if you don't have that, it's tough, I believe the community would just begin to erode away.

Just like with Kroger's, that hurt.

That was a hit because that's a resource that we no longer have.

When you take away those resources and you keep taking away those resources, you just keep eroding it that, you'll start seeing the community just fade away.

Look around the Delta, and some of those other towns that were once bustling or thriving at least, one of the things was their, supermarkets went away or their grocery stores went away.

- It's really like a part of your family you lose because it was so important to us.

(soft piano music) - You know, it ends up being more personal than just a business closing down.

That's about the best way I can put it.

(soft piano music) (corn leaves rustling) - I honestly think that when we look at this concept of resilience, even in the communities that are food deserts, even in those communities that are 20 and 30 miles away, they figured out how to get their food.

Right?

When you look at Mississippi as a whole, we have these demonstration projects, if you will, or we have evidence of where the community members have been instrumental in addressing those issues that have been plaguing them for years.

(wind whooshing) - The Care Station started in 1987.

And for probably the last, I'd say 10 years, we've been designed to feed a certain number of people on a daily basis.

And so, we've kind of set our a number around 185 to 190 people.

Generally, what we get from, from any of these grocery stores is food that's- it's met its expiration date and we get it on the day of the expiration.

And then we process it, go through the vegetables and fruit and stuff and prepare it and try to get it on the menu that day.

We have the women that serve in the serving line and get the food on the plate.

Those are coming from different churches in the community.

And then the individuals, the volunteers that work in the back in the kitchen area, these are women that just have been called to come and do this.

But everyone else that works for the Care Station, all the board members, myself, everybody are all volunteers.

And it goes across the community.

The folks that are involved in this mission, see it as, you know, with great responsibility that they're counted on to be doing what they're supposed to do.

(people chattering) It's just a different relationship with people than I've ever had in a normal work environment.

And it's a true spirit of people that care.

And that's the thing that I see about Clarksdale.

There's a lot of people that care.

It's just the nature of a small town.

- They're not waiting on someone to come in and give them the answer or waiting on someone to be, the one that solves their problems.

They figured out that, you know what, if we can collaborate, if we can figure out how to tap into our best resources, we can solve some of these issues.

- Okay?

This is a lady here.

(papers rustling) Sarah is her name, but she usually takes a little while getting to the door.

(footsteps) (knocking on door) - This is a great group of people and they are so dedicated for the simple reason, they don't ask anything of the Care Station.

They just volunteer their time and service five days a week.

(door slams) (door creaking) - Good morning.

- [Sarah] Good morning.

- We've got a gentleman here taking your pictures if that's okay?

(Sarah laughing) - [Sarah] Its okay.

- (indistinct) for the Care Station.

- [Sarah] Yeah, thank you.

- You have a good day.

- [Sarah] You too.

- Alright, bye.

(door slams) - You think of a person's time involved.

They use their own gas.

Nobody is replacing this and all this is, you know, this is costly to them, but they enjoy doing it.

You'd never hear anyone complain.

Never.

- Kroger was a major donor of food to the Care Station.

In the last year that they were here, they donated 57,000 pounds of food to the Care Station.

During that year.

When we found out they were gonna close down, we didn't know what we were gonna do.

It's gotten more and more difficult to finance something like this.

It's one of those things that you don't know, particularly how you're gonna solve it with a town that's not really growing right at this moment.

- No.

- It'd be tough.

It'd be tough on a lot of people.

(claps hands) - Oh, that would be a tremendous hurt to many citizens of Clarksdale.

There are 35 to 40 people walking in every day and they depend on the Care Station.

And with some of them, this is their only meal.

So I can't imagine, I can't imagine what would happen and how sad it would be for the different communities.

Almost like a hurricane to Clarksdale.

Just couldn't do it.

We just couldn't do it.

Uh uh.

(door slams) - Good morning.

(door creaks) Hi.

The food you bringing now is real important.

That's my lunch.

And sometime I may (laughing) not get anything else until you know- - Right.

- next morning.

So it's very important to my daughter and I.

- [Interviewer] Do you look forward to every day?

- Every day, yes.

- Oh, it's very important.

It's, really important.

Each city needs it because there's a lot of elderly people that can't get around and do it for themselves.

And that meal once a day, and the goodie bag on Fridays it's- helps out a lot.

And I think it's very important to have it here in Clarksdale.

- I've had numerous friends that started delivering food or working at the Care Station and they're sitting there and they're going.

I had no idea.

I've lived here all my life and I had no idea.

(paper rustling) And we hear that story over and over.

When I got involved with the Care Station, it was like, I was thinking about me and what I could do, you know, to help the Care Station or deliver food and that type of thing.

And it never crossed my mind that I was going, I was gonna have more given back to me than I could ever give forward.

- This lady or this family that needs some help, the Care Station is right there for them.

So that means everything.

Care Station just means everything to Clarksdale.

Yes.

(soft piano music) (slow orchestral music) - This may feel like, or seem like a place that's been forgotten.

When it comes to the Blues, the Mississippi Delta isn't forgotten, right?

it's the birthplace and people flock to the Delta to you know, look at the museum, see the home places and visit these areas that are dedicated to celebrating the Blues.

It's easy to overlook the poverty that is very present, very visible, because if that's not the focus, then I don't have to think about it.

I don't have to look at it.

I don't have to consider it, but the people who live there, live it every day.

They live in poverty every day.

And that's not to say that everybody deals with it, but it touches people's lives in such a way that you can't ignore it.

- I think the story of Clarksdale is very similar to the story of Mississippi.

Like, there's a lot of good things in Mississippi, the culture that we've created here, our music, our food, is something that we've been able to share with the entire world, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done and we're just gonna have to get to work.

- So how do we assess what they're doing?

How do we go in and understand this factor or this element of resilience that exists in a food desert.

And then take those best practices and share them with other people.

So that if a grocery store leaves, that doesn't necessarily leave the town high and dry, right?

That doesn't necessarily leave people in a space or a place where they can access food.

Regardless of our situation, regardless of the circumstances that we're faced with, we press forward because that's what we do.

We help our neighbors.

We help our families and we help ourselves eat because that's what we need to do.

We press forward.

- I think eventually we'll be able to make some real progress here.

I've seen progress at a small scale.

And I think that if we continue to work, we'll be able to fix a lot of the things that are broken here, Not just in Clarksdale, in Coahama County and the Delta, but throughout the entire State of Mississippi.