Greenwood County, South Carolina’s roots date back to the late 1800s, when it established its blue-collar identity. When Greenwood County Library System Director Prudence Taylor arrived at the library in 1997, the unemployment rate was 4 percent. But that changed when the mills, which had been sustaining the community, closed after 2000. As a result, at one point, unemployment was as high as 11 percent.
“People had planned to work for the mills all their lives, as their fathers and grandfathers had done,” said Taylor.
The population also changed, as more Latino residents moved in to work at the meat packing plant. When a newspaper article brought attention to the growing need of these new residents, the library began moving toward beefing up its bilingual and ESL collections to serve this burgeoning population.