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America's poorest towns

In a series of four dispatches, Chris McGreal reports from four of the poorest towns in the USA – in Kentucky, Mississippi, Texas and Arizona – and meets those trying to do more than survive in places so remote from the American dream.
  • A shredded American flag at a grave site, Blackwater, Arizona.

    A reservation town fighting alcoholism, obesity and ghosts from the past

    In the Native American community of Blackwater, Arizona, gambling money flows from nearby casinos but personal incomes remain among the lowest in the US. Chris McGreal visits for the last in his series on America’s poorest towns
  • Picking parsley in Colona Muñiz.

    America's poorest border town: no immigration papers, no American Dream

    In his third dispatch from the US’s most deprived communities, Chris McGreal visits Colonia Muñiz in Texas, where the right documents can make the difference between surviving and prospering
  • A pool game in a Tchula club.

    Poorest town in poorest state: segregation is gone but so are the jobs

    In his second dispatch from the US’s most deprived communities, Chris McGreal visits Tchula in Mississippi, where crime is high and opportunities are few
  • Lee County, Beattyville Kentucky. Deputy Sheriff David Stamper on patrol

    America's poorest white town: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs

    In the first of a series of dispatches from the US’s poorest communities, we visit Beattyville, Kentucky, blighted by a lack of jobs and addiction to painkillers