Cairo, Illinois. | Is a dead town. | We drove through it twice in May 2018.
Our first trip through Cairo we saw one person. One person drinking a Bud Light. Ironic, we traveled from Cairo to Future City and neither seemed to have a future. Eerily empty.
Cairo, pronounced CARE-o, became a tinderbox of racial unrest and the city never survived it. The Ohio and Mississippi rivers confluence is not very far. Cairo like its Egyptian counterpart is surrounded by water.
Lynching happened in Cairo. The racial unrest probably was around for years but 1900 started the ball down the slippery slope and never recovered. In 1900, Cairo had a population of 13,000 and 5,000 of that 13,000 were African-Americans. A traditional white heritage town had the largest percentage per capita of African-Americans, nearly 40 percent.
Railroads slowly reduced steamboat and ferry traffic that supplied Cairo’s economy. When the local economy sours, it’s easy to find scapegoats. More racial tensions.
Major highway bridges were built to the south of town and contributed even more to economic decline as automobile traffic took off from Illinois into Missouri.
A riot protesting the death of black soldier in the Cairo jail turned Cairo into a Rome is burning town. I remember watching Walter Cronkite on CBS news showing images of the National Guard trying to get order restored. But it was too late – the black residents held a 10-year quarantine of white-owned businesses. The white population created a militia called the White Hats. Eerily KKK. And probably not much different.
A city divided cannot stand. A lack of inclusion and government diversity does not create a foundation. Cairo’s racial divide doomed so many economic opportunities.
When the Interstate bypassed the city in the late 70s, more businesses closed, more people left, the hospital closed, but yet high racial tension remained. Now the business district is virtually boarded up or decrepit.
On our second trip back through town heading to Chattanooga, we saw three people out on the streets. Nobody seems to give a damn about Cairo, Illinois.
An easy way to get rid of racial tension – have no population left to be angrily divided. More like, despair and depression rules the day now in downtown Cairo.
Cairo is, simply, no more.
