be the African American part of town certainly has some pockets still of poverty in the mixed racial neighborhoods. It has two poultry plants there.

The county has a lot of weatlh. The agricultural output value of Rockingham County a few years ago was by itself more than the state of WV. I think it is more than 200% of any other Virginia County. That is a lot of wealth. The number of banks in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County is (or was) exceptionally high. Most of this wealth is concentrated in the old money from German settlers, Lutheran and Brethren and Mennonite.

We also have many lower middle class communities that lie toward either the Blue Ridge or the Shenandoah Mountains. These are the traditional Scottish and Irish communities that settled later after the Lancaster Germans had gobbled up the river bottom land. These workers tend not to be college educated and provide blue collar labor to the factories you see on 81 as you pass. They used to be meat processing workers, but these labor intensive plants hire a lot of Hispanics.

Traditional umemployment in Harrisonburg is low due to its amazing diverse opportunities.

There is one other element. During the 1990's we had an influx of Russian and Ukrainian refugees that were Baptists and deeply religious looking for freedom. They generally connected with sponsoring Mennonite or Brethren Churches. This community simply thrived in freedom. They are very entrepreneurial in spirit, hard working, adopted to educational opportunities, usually in trades or community college nursing programs. It's hard to find a better model for how immigration can benefit an area. They have their own churches and retain a good deal of their culture, teaching native language at home even while mainstreaming in general society.