Dollar stores force local grocery stores to close. This woman opened one anyway.
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Marquitrice Mangham never imagined that she’d open a grocery store in her hometown of Webb, Mississippi.
She left in the 1990s after high school. But in 2016, she inherited her family’s farm, splitting her time between the majority-Black town of fewer than 500 people in the rural Delta and her current home in Atlanta.
Webb had changed considerably and was regressing, she said. Businesses had closed, and the housing situation got worse — but the food desert still had a Dollar General. Like many counties across the Delta region, Tallahatchie County, where Webb is, is situated in a food desert. Though the town has had the Dollar General since 2009, it only provided frozen and processed foods. Here, the residents never had a grocery store, forcing many to travel more than 20 miles to the nearest one.
