Sixth District Congressman James Clyburn, the House majority whip, says Dubai World's plans could transform the infamous "Corridor of Shame," which runs along Interstate 95, "into a corridor of fame." The "Corridor of Shame" is an area of largely rural, mostly poor counties that line Interstate 95 through South Carolina.

http://www.thetandd.com/articles/2007/09/09/news/12740339.txt

After the class meeting I found it hard to believe that the schools along this “Corridor of Shame” are as bad as they currently are and nobody is taking charge to develop this area. I came across this article talking about a $700 million logistics hub that may come to this rural area. The result would be around 10,000 jobs, and the total investment could reach $1.2 billion. The scale of this project would be larger than Spartanburg’s BMW and Greenville’s Michelin projects. The interest for developing in this area was due to the close proximity to I-95, I-26, U.S. 301, and rail systems. Also the decrease in manufacturing along the “Corridor of Shame” created a large number of unemployed, which could in turn fill up the possible 10,000 jobs. My main concern was with the quality of education in the area and that the jobs would actually be filled by others further away. So then I started to look into educational developments in the same area.

Reading more about Congressman Clyburn, it appears that he is proposing a lot of investment into Voorhees College. In our class discussions we talk about the importance of educational institutions in towns and Clyburn appears to be taking the initiative to invest in this partnership between Voorhees College and Denmark. Both the articles appeared in September 2007 so they are fairly recent initiatives toward the increase in a higher quality of living in the rural South.