Hero Storefront 2002

Abstract

SINCE WALKER EVANS and James Agee visited Greensboro, Hale County’s seat, during the Depression and described it in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, little has changed. In the 1930s Agee wrote, “The little towns, the county seats, house by house white-painted . . . stand so prim, so voided, so undefended upon starlight.” Greensboro’s Main Street still looks abandoned; about half its storefronts stand empty, and the few shoppers you see tend to be elderly. So a newly rehabbed storefront with a softly modern canopy of stainless chain metal—found by students while dumpster diving in Montgomery—is a hopeful sign.