The Girls of Lower Price Hill

This is a powerful piece on how poverty affects the girls in this Cincinnati community of Appalachian migrant families.

The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Girls of Lower Price Hill
They are as fierce - and fiercely loyal to friends and family - as the females who went before them.
Story by Krista Ramsey and Photos by Liz Dufour

(excerpt)
The geography and protective feel of an Appalachian "holler."

Chapter 2: State

State, the kids call it, after the street at the bottom of the hill that leads into the mostly Appalachian, chronically poor neighborhood of 1,000 residents all of whom know each other and many of whom are kin.

Or else they simply call it "down here."

Twenty years ago, what happened down here to young, white Appalachian girls like Kelsey was almost invariably that they got pregnant early, left school quickly and left the neighborhood not at all. Seen as the transition from being a girl to being a woman, early motherhood was not just something many families supported, it was something they celebrated.

As late as 2005, when community members petitioned the Cincinnati School Board to add grades nine through 12 to Oyler School, more than 84 percent of Oyler eighth graders dropped out by 10th grade. To this day, nearly 40 percent of adults in the community don't have a high school diploma....

MORE at http://www.cincinnati.com/longform/news/2014/11/15/girls-of-lower-price-hill-cincinnati/18090143/