THE ATOM: The Displaced

Barnwell District, Aiken Town,

O Lord, in mercy do look down,

The land is poor, the people too,

If they don't steal, what will they do?

—Sharecropper's lament

Poverty is an old story among the sandhills and pine barrens in South Carolina's Barnwell County. For more than a hundred years, small farmers have scratched a poor living out of sandy soil, have watched spring droughts brown their corn and boll weevils eat their cotton. But never before had people felt as beset and unwanted as they did last week.

In all of the Savannah River...

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