When most people think of ghost towns, they think of dusty Western towns that were abandoned two centuries ago in the wake of a dried up gold rush. Mostly, they imagine them to be in California or Nevada. However, the United States has countless ghost towns in virtually every state. One of America’s most haunting abandoned cities is a once prosperous port town called Cairo, Illinois. A prolonged economic downturn and sustained racial unrest, reduced this city of 15,000 people to a nearly vacant town of a little over 2,000.
Apartment building, Cairo, Illinois
When trains and steamboats ruled the transit world, Cairo was poised to become one of the most prized transit hubs in the United States. Cairo is located near the point, where the Ohio River and Mississippi River converge. Cairo’s heyday was in the late 1920s. Ship builders, railroad workers, and boat captains lived a comfortable life in the up-and-coming town. Then the Great Depression came to Cairo, and never left. In the 1940s when the rest of the nation began to recover, Cairo’s boat and rail dependent economy failed to adapt to the increasing popularity of the automobile.
Cairo has a long and painful history of racial discord. After the Civil War, many formerly enslaved Black people migrated to Cairo to find work and build new lives. Unfortunately, many bigoted white residents did not take kindly to the influx of Black people. Racial tensions remained constantly inflamed well into the 1960s. Then, a vigilante white militia group: the White Hats, was intimidating Black residents in the wake of the death of a Black solider, who was murdered by Cairo police while on leave in the town.
View looking North on Commercial Avenue, Cairo, Illinois, 1929
Cairo features desolate rows of decaying, abandoned homes and businesses. The sinister specter of the bigoted attitudes of decades past still haunt the streets. Thankfully, current Cairo town leaders are doing their best to confront Cairo’s racist past. Despite efforts to revive and repopulate Cairo, the once bustling port town remains mostly dormant. Cairo’s rotting, shuttered main drag is a cautionary time capsule that demonstrates what racial intolerance and an inability to adapt economically can do to a place.
Cairo Illinois 90 years old homeless
Photo by Dan Pearlman
Any lover of abandoned buildings will tell you that one of the reasons why abandoned spaces are so captivating is because they offer invaluable insight into outmoded ways of being. The ruins of Cairo have much to teach us about certain troubling chapters of American history that many would rather forget.
My poem a gift to share the expressions of my visions.
Being liberty for 42 years and being blind to it
I learned that people are ignorant and abusive and don’t have any remorse for the actions they caused or trauma they put me through.
Being in the water is visions spells performed through actions making life’s difficult to maintain a peace morality of human life which spells are nothing but science performed of technology blocking people’s daily needs to get basic needs of living.
I learned from mark that domnation is mind of matter, and what you allow to happen will happen, that you have control over your life. It doesn’t matter what people say, words are just an expression of their opinions and opinions are like assholes everyone has one. No one has ever walked in my shoes or went through what I went through, an American ways has become a sad vision of robotic puppet shows which is sadly invention of natural disasters.
I see farm life drying up, I see animals starving
I see trees dying gardens being destroyed and ancestors of beginnings deteriorating.
I see materialistic people only caring about items and not humans, the world has become so cold and bitter and integrity became just a word. Empathy sympathy and apathy faded into the winds and slavery is the new form of facial expressions for the rich. And when that is gone who are you to use then. If only the rich get richer and poorer get poorer. Items come and go but people can’t be replaced.
Leaving america is a choice a made and want as a goal because they have destroyed me from over the years where I don’t believe love exist anymore. I lost faith and hope! I was emotionally and physically and sexually abused and I won’t allow any of that to come my way anymore. They have showed me in 42 years that no one cares and I want to be around people who care. So maybe leaving America might show them that it’s truly over for me until people start changing the way the see each other and how they treat each other.
Getting to know a true person is difficult these days because so many personalities of others are inflicted in the shadows of strings. To much of rudeness is expressed and the games of a control manipulation of dominance is beneath me, I find it to be ignorant spreading lies and bullying an individual to get what you want. Respect is earned not given freely.
Body image of a half naked sexuality is showing the younger generations it’s ok to be disrespected and treating like your easy.
The whole game from the Jacksons view from my younger years is mirror image. I’m not racist
I just have a preference of what I prefer, and from the experience of being disrespected from that race and treated poorly is the main reason I block them. You get what you give and since all they have done was abuse me then they won’t get me back regardless of the apologies as metaphorically speaking of the anguish I carry through thoughts of revenge. Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me!
Busting my hump to build a nation of empires for everyone else is the mirror image and body parts of perfection for the insecure my result for that and doing my work of care is nothing, I got no percentage no home no special treatment, I get to be homeless for all my hard work and especially working and caring for the elderly for over twenty years. Would you be happy with getting nothing and being dragged through the mudd just to slowly fade into a coffin forcefully from your Americans who showed nothing but hate and envy and covering up their and your lies. Faded lines of droopy eyes, smile slowly brutality taken being the features of radiant cells to the green mask of green screen. Broken and damaged like watching a perfectly good home being abandoned, feeling of nothing but emptiness and sadness the vision of the real reality of what I call my world today from all my experience, just a girl who became a woman thrown to the trash of so much sorrow. That was my love from the world. Thank you but no thank you. Your world today is pure evil of everyone your using in survivor mode. Climb is the expression you’ll do great is the manipulation they use to pump you up. Lies all lies! I don’t believe anyone when they say they care, my question is what is the catch?
Figuring out the truth and expressing hurts but so does finally seeing it!