Saving St. Joseph

Becky Vizard is vivacious, instantly familiar, and full of stories of her beloved hometown: St. Joseph, Louisiana. She serves as the perfect tour guide, both hopeful and aware of St. Joseph’s first impression. This past year, Vizard and a growing league of younger residents, including shopowners, artists, and farmers, began laying the groundwork that could infuse the town with new life. As creative placemaking, which harnesses the power of arts and culture as an economic driver, becomes more commonplace in towns and cities, St. Joseph could be the ideal blank slate.

A renowned interior designer, over the last two decades Vizard has sourced antique textiles from around the world to adorn hand-stitched, luxury pillows for her business, B. Viz Design. Her storefront in downtown “St. Joe” was the first to anchor Plank Road—the town’s main street—and she opened her New Orleans atelier on Magazine Street earlier this year. Born and raised in St. Joseph, Vizard left for a brief stint in the city to earn a Tulane degree, just as her daddy did, before (begrudgingly, she’ll admit) moving back home in 1987 so her husband, Michael, could take the reins from her father and manage the town’s bank. 

Vizard knows everybody, and the moment we turn on to Plank Road, she waves and greets neighbors through her window every few feet. We enter the well-preserved Christ Episcopal Church (built in 1882, the church once hosted performances by the now-defunct local symphony) and pass Tensas Academy, where she was crowned Homecoming Queen in another life. Most of Vizard’s fond observations are, tellingly, in past tense. In recounting the story of a visiting friend who didn’t quite know what he was getting himself into, Vizard responds matter-of-factly: “Baby, this is the Delta.” 

Land and water

It’s harvest season when I visit Tensas Parish. Even on a Saturday, cotton strippers can be seen extracting tufts of white fiber from the seemingly endless rows of plants that extend in every direction and packing the bolls into dense modules. It’s about mid-morning, high time for the heat to settle like a thick sheet over the freshly gleaned fields, but, surprisingly, the weather is cool for the first time in a while. It actually feels like October. 

[Read this: A Long Look at Montgomery]

Ties to the land run deep in the sleepy town of St. Joseph, which sits in the Mississippi Delta on Louisiana’s northeastern border. Agriculture is the region’s primary economic driver and has been since the town was established in 1843 as fertile ground for wealthy cotton merchants. St. Joe’s downtown borders the Mississippi River levee, and as one resident noted, “That river is the ebb and flow of this area.” Farming today is mostly a family trade, and land is passed down through generations. 

With a population of around a thousand people, St. Joseph has at least ten churches within a square mile and not a single traffic light in sight. Once-grand historic homes lie in various states of decline along the town’s streets. The nearest cities—Natchez and Vicksburg—are each an hour’s drive away. 

Four miles away, Lake Bruin seems a world apart. An ox-bow remnant of the Mississippi’s former course, the lake is lined by vacation houses, camps, and a popular state park. Visitors to the lake bring in vital tourism dollars that help to keep the town afloat during the summer season. To Vizard, whose home overlooks Lake Bruin and who still likes to wash her hair in the lake water, it’s a hidden gem that could make all the difference for St. Joe.   

“I want to show people the beauty of where we are that they might not see, but if you’re open to it, you can see it. We’re starting to see the impact we can have as individuals.” —Leslie Ratcliff

Many of St. Joseph’s issues are shared by rural communities throughout the region: population decline, blight, poverty, lack of jobs, unqualified workforce, racial tensions, crumbling infrastructure due to the lack of taxes in the town’s coffers. St. Joe was once a “vibrant little town,” according to town mayor Elvadus Fields, Jr., but as farming became increasingly mechanized and commercialized in the late twentieth century, more young people left for an education and didn’t return, instead settling in cities with better job opportunities. Businesses closed, and the once-bustling town has become dormant in the years since. 

Mayor Fields, with his clear blue eyes and strong, sure voice, seems younger than his 82 years. He is the type of man who greets you formally by title and surname (“Mrs. Vizard”) and often fills town potholes in his dress clothes. Elected in 2016, Fields beat the incumbent, Edward Brown, by just three votes. Fields landed a victory, but he undoubtedly had his work cut out for him. Earlier that year, his predecessor had been investigated by the state legislative auditor and accused of misappropriating $20,000 in town funds. Fields inherited a public health crisis in December 2016 when lead contaminated the town’s aging water supply. After a year of boil advisories, murky tap water, absolutely no white clothing, and a $9.5 million repair, the water ran clear. Basic needs fulfilled, St. Joseph’s residents could start to plan for the future.  

Creative community

For three women who married into St. Joseph, making the town feel like a home that would still be around as their children grew up meant taking matters into their own hands. Shop All Daye owner Natalie Schauf said that opening her own boutique was never not an option. Schauf, who previously helped run Hemline stores on the Northshore, in Baton Rouge, and in New Orleans, was determined to create the opportunity she wished existed in St. Joe. “It’s hard to find a job here if you’re not a teacher, a farmer, or a banker,” said Schauf. “I did it because we really do have so many great and talented people here, and we all want to support each other.” 

[Read this: The Craft of Embracing Your Place]

Leslie Ratcliff, a teacher and artist who draws inspiration from the landscape, uses her gallery space to paint and showcase her work, hold events for the community, and host art classes for her students. “I want to show people the beauty of where we are that they might not see, but if you’re open to it, you can see it,” said Ratcliff. “We’re starting to see the impact we can have as individuals.” 

A farmers market—running Memorial Day to Labor Day—was established last year, and the town’s first community garden is slated to open in January. The St. Joe Garden & Grow Project, spearheaded by Farrar Crigler, will equip community youth with the education and gardening skills to promote sustainable agriculture. “I saw an opportunity to create something that every community deserves to be a part of,” said Crigler.  

A little vision and a lot of determination can go a long way here.  Chip and Valerie Sloan, who moved to St. Joe around eight years ago and own River Traders Antiques and Plank Road Pottery downtown, say there’s no place they’d rather be. “If you do have a creative mind, a small town like this offers you a lot of opportunities,” said Chip Sloan. “Creative people can make these buildings viable and have community, and that’s important. It just takes a couple of people with enthusiasm and who truly believe in it.”

Like most endeavors worth doing, starting is the hardest part. Growth begets growth, and each step in the right direction prompts a chain reaction—but revitalization doesn’t happen overnight.

Baton Rouge’s own Ann and Paul Connelly describe St. Joseph as “on the cusp of something big.” Longtime friends of the Vizards, Ann and Paul have been making the trek to St. Joe for decades, and recently invested in a downtown storefront there. Paul, who owns Connelly Construction, compares it to his work, how he has to enter a space and be able to envision its possibility. “St. Joe’s got bones,” said Paul. “I think that we can do something there.” Ann sees St. Joe as the solution to artists seeking retreat or inspiration, and the low overhead doesn’t hurt. “It’s a golden opportunity for creatives and makers,” she said. “The motto there should be ‘coming soon.’”

Visual artist George Marks, who spearheaded the revitalization of Acadiana’s Arnaudville and is the executive director of the NUNU Arts and Culture Collective, has become an authority on creative placemaking in Louisiana. Marks has ideas for St. Joe, which he says has the cultural chops and the people, but needs to realize and take full advantage of its local assets, like Lake Bruin. Establishing places for guests to lay their heads is the first step to increasing sales tax revenues through cultural development and utilizing those assets. The rest is contingent on cultivating relationships: with neighboring towns to direct to one another’s resources, with other creative organizations to form cultural exchanges and residencies. 

“Our community is small, but it is bound with love." —Mayor Elvadus Fields

But, for progress to stick, community-wide participation is crucial, otherwise you can tread into gentrification, said Marks. St. Joseph is predominantly African American, and its businesses and merchants have to be inclusive to succeed. Like most endeavors worth doing, starting is the hardest part. Growth begets growth, and each step in the right direction prompts a chain reaction—but revitalization doesn’t happen overnight. It took fifteen years to put Arnaudville back on the map. 

For all its faults, St. Joseph remains a place that has fostered a deeply-rooted sense of community; some people will never leave, no matter what. This concept boggles outsiders, who fail to understand why a person would remain or, even more baffling, move into town. 

But this is the Delta, and this is St. Joseph—brunt beauty, unflinching honesty, and raw potential, if you only look a little deeper. “Our community is small, but it is bound with love,” said Mayor Fields, who has lived in St. Joe since 1961. Vizard agrees. “We want to do what we can for the town because we love it,” she said. For the people who live there, it’s home and always will be, despite its present shortcomings. What else is there left to do but try?