Andy Griffith’s rural North Carolina hometown hopes Trump will make America great again
MOUNT AIRY, N.C. – From a perch on Main Street, the hometown of actor Andy Griffith looks this day like it was plucked right out of the television show that bears his name. And it was.
Residents and tourists from farflung states mill along the thoroughfare, past the quaint low-slung shops made of Mount Airy’s famous white granite and named, like Floyd’s City Barber Shop, for references in “The Andy Griffith Show,” the folksy comedy set in the idyllic fictional small town of Mayberry that first aired in 1960.
And yet even as this city of about 10,000 nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains fills its coffers by selling nostalgia, many of its residents would agree with the now-popular saying “We’re not in Mayberry anymore.”
If only the real Mount Airy, which has experienced decades of economic and social decline, were like the Mayberry facade, muses Mayor David Rowe. If only his city and the rest of America could return to the 1950s again. “Now it’s about secular progressivism, not the values you get out of this book,” like honesty and hard work, said Rowe, 72, jabbing his finger at the leather Bible on his office desk.
But as Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, Rowe and many of his constituents are hoping for a return to the past.
“We’re going to hold him to it,” said Brad Thomas, 42, who used to work as an engineer building turbine blades for power plants before his job was moved to Mexico.
A yearning for an earlier time, especially prevalent in rural American towns and cities like Mount Airy, helped spur white evangelical Christians to vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. For these voters, the desire for change also could be viewed as a desire to change back to what they perceive as a more wholesome and prosperous time, when high-paying manufacturing jobs were plentiful, white Protestants were indisputably in charge and same-sex marriage and the Black Lives Matter movement were unthinkable.
Seventy-four percent of white evangelicals believe American culture has mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s – more than any other group of Americans – compared with 56 percent of all whites, according to a 2015 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. In sharp contrast, 62 percent of African-Americans and 57 percent of Hispanic Americans think the culture has changed for the better, the survey said.
With his promise to “Make America Great Again,” Trump appealed directly to this sense of dispossession, and 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for him, according to exit polls. “You think back to the 1990s, and conservative Christians could throw around the phrase ‘moral majority,’ and there was a kernel of truth to that,” said PRRI demographer Robert P. Jones, author of “The End of White Christian America.” “Even in 2008, they could say the country is on our side on (same-sex marriage), and that’s changed so quickly in this last decade. The election hit on fundamental questions about what America is and should be.”
Many Mount Airy residents applauded the president-elect’s promise to revoke the Johnson Amendment, which effectively bars pastors from endorsing a candidate from the pulpit, Rowe said. They were heartened by his suggestion that Christians will be able to once again see “Merry Christmas” signs in department stores.
But the mayor acknowledges that the 1950s and ’60s were not idyllic for all Americans. He wouldn’t, for example, want to go back to the days when there were separate water fountains at the local Sears for whites and blacks.
Ron Jessup, 68, who grew up in Mount Airy during that era, found the place generally friendly then, he said – as long as he and other blacks obeyed the racist laws and social mores of the time.
If African-Americans went to the theater, they sat upstairs, he said. If they went to the restaurants, they avoided the counter. “We understood what was considered our place,” said Jessup, who is retired from his job as a high school principal in nearby Winston-Salem.
Rowe notes that while his hometown looks picturesque from the outside, it has faced some of the same issues as urban areas, including drugs and divorce. Things might have turned out differently if religion had maintained its role in the culture, he suggested.
People just aren’t committed to church, anymore, he said. The church he attends used to attract up to 600 people on a Sunday in the 1960s, but is lucky to get a third of that now.
If Trump does manage to “make America great again,” Rowe said it will involve preventing the government from encroaching on religion.
Christianity has come under attack in America, he said. “It’s subtle, not in your face, but that’s the way Satan works,” he said.
A yearning for an earlier time, especially prevalent in rural American towns and cities like Mount Airy, N.C., helped spur white evangelical Christians to vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. MUST CREDIT: Logan Cyrus for The Washington Post.
John Eaton, from Flat Rock, N.C., holds up a signs that reads “Your Best Choice… Jesus Christ” on the corner of Pine and Main street in downtown Mount Airy, N.C. A yearning for an earlier time, especially prevalent in rural American towns and cities like Mount Airy, helped spur white evangelical Christians to vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
Just off Main Street in downton Mount Airy, N.C., you can see defunct mills left over from a once thriving texile industry that made the area what it is today. Some of the space is slowly being renovated for commercial and retail space. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
If only the real Mount Airy, which has experienced decades of economic and social decline, were like the Mayberry facade, muses Mayor David Rowe. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
Even as this city of about 10,000 nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains fills its coffers by selling nostalgia, many of its residents would agree with the now-popular saying “We’re not in Mayberry anymore.” MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
A Marine Corps Corporal stands with an American Flag after the Veterans Day parade in downtown Mount Airy, N.C. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
In Mount Airy, N.C., White Plains Baptists Church Pastor David Tucker and his wife Theresa Tucker stand in the front of the sactuary of the new White Plains Baptist Church. They voted for Trump because they want a more limited federal government, mentioning social issues such as abortion, gay marriage and school prayer. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
John Eaton, from Flat Rock, N.C., holds up a signs that reads “Your Best Choice… Jesus Christ” on the corner of Pine and Main street in downtown Mount Airy, N.C. A yearning for an earlier time, especially prevalent in rural American towns and cities like Mount Airy, helped spur white evangelical Christians to vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
Just off Main Street in downton Mount Airy, N.C., you can see defunct mills left over from a once thriving texile industry that made the area what it is today. Some of the space is slowly being renovated for commercial and retail space. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
If only the real Mount Airy, which has experienced decades of economic and social decline, were like the Mayberry facade, muses Mayor David Rowe. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
Even as this city of about 10,000 nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains fills its coffers by selling nostalgia, many of its residents would agree with the now-popular saying “We’re not in Mayberry anymore.” MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
A Marine Corps Corporal stands with an American Flag after the Veterans Day parade in downtown Mount Airy, N.C. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
In Mount Airy, N.C., White Plains Baptists Church Pastor David Tucker and his wife Theresa Tucker stand in the front of the sactuary of the new White Plains Baptist Church. They voted for Trump because they want a more limited federal government, mentioning social issues such as abortion, gay marriage and school prayer. MUST CREDIT: Logan R. Cyrus for The Washington Post.
A yearning for an earlier time, especially prevalent in rural American towns and cities like Mount Airy, N.C., helped spur white evangelical Christians to vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. MUST CREDIT: Logan Cyrus for The Washington Post.