The Tunica public schools are under state supervision for poor academic performance. The enrollment is all black and mostly poor. Drought, combined with the casinos appetite for land for roads, golf courses, and hotels, has driven away some of the farmers that were the backbone of Tunica s old agricultural economy. I think we ve kept losing people since 1990, says Brooks Taylor, editor and publisher of The Tunica Times. Farming is depressed, and my husband s a farmer.
Crops are just awful.
Everything is dried up. The casinos, on the other hand, have been triple winners. Betty Jo Dulaney, director of the Tunica County Literacy Council, estimates that half the adults in Tunica County are illiterate. Most of the people that come to this program do not read well enough to pass the G.E.D., which is what employers require for skilled jobs, she says. It isn t that Tunica has ignored the needs of its own citizens.