Each morning, his twin daughters, along with several other Native American children, stood alongside the road, waiting on the school bus. Each morning, the school bus, half-filled with white children, would go racing by, never slowing for the waiting kids.
It was 1947 in Alabama, and for the children in the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, there was no guarantee of a public education. Only white children enjoyed that privilege. And all Black and Native American kids were free to attend their own schools.
For the impoverished Poarch Creeks, however, there was no option. At least, not one past sixth grade. That was the highest grade level offered by the tribal school.
And so, the bus flew by each morning, leaving the kids coated in dust and disappointment. Until Jack Daughtry had enough.
After watching his twin daughters be left behind by the bus, and after confronting public officials repeatedly, Daughtry took a stand. Literally.
He stood in the middle of the road, daring the bus to either run him down or stop.
It stopped. His daughters, along with other Poarch Creek kids, got on. They went to school. Then Daughtry, and Chief Calvin McGhee, went to court, fighting to give Native American children the right to a public education within their county school districts.
“You don’t hear much about the fact that (Native American) kids weren’t allowed in public schools, but that was a fact of life,” said Keith Martin, a Poarch Creek Tribal Council member. “Our schools only went up to sixth grade and after that there were no options. Most Native Americans in this state didn’t have a high school diploma at the time. They didn’t want us to have anything, and we didn’t have much.”
That was life for a Poarch Creek some 80 years ago.
Today, though, there are different buses that run through Atmore, where the Poarch Creeks’ reservation is located. Those buses originate from the reservation. They leave empty each day. They return packed with children of all races. From school districts all around the area.
The children on those buses are members of the state’s first Native American Boys and Girls Club. Membership is open to all tribal members, 1st and 2nd generation, tribal employees and their families, and to members of other Native American tribes.
The buses pick up at 10 schools in four counties and dip into Florida as well. Roughly 400 kids take part in the free after school and summer programs. The only charge is a $50-per-year pick-up fee for kids who don’t attend local schools.
“I think it’s the thing, out of all we’ve built, that we’re all most proud of,” said PCI Tribal Chair and CEO Stephanie Bryan. “We know what it was like growing up on the reservation, back before all of this. We were so poor – I could literally see the dirt under my grandmother’s house through the cracks in the floorboards. That’s just how it was. To be able to build something like this now and see kids on this reservation have opportunities that we never dreamed of – well, it’s a dream come true, it really is.”
The “all of this” that Bryan references is, of course, the financial success the Poarch Creeks have experienced over the past two decades from their gaming operations. Like other federally recognized Native American tribes, the Poarch Creeks are allowed by federal law to conduct certain gambling activities on their federal trust lands.
The laws and regulations that allow it are complicated, so in the interest of brevity and simplicity, let’s just say that PCI can operate electronic bingo machines (which look and function much like slot machines) because Alabama allows for bingo gambling to take place elsewhere in the state. And while PCI has operated its casinos in Atmore, Wetumpka and Montgomery, Alabama officials have consistently fought efforts by traditional casino operators to conduct the same games, giving the Poarch Creeks a de facto monopoly, even if they never asked for it. (Alabama officials also fought in federal court to prevent the Poarch Creeks from operating casinos, but federal laws prevailed.)
More Than Gambling
Because of those legal fights and the media attention they generated over the decades, the Poarch Creek tribe is viewed by most Alabamians through a gambling prism. When most residents hear or read of PCI, Poarch Creeks or Wind Creek, they think of the casinos, the media reports about legislative haggling and the many court battles over gaming laws.
While that’s fair to a certain degree – after all, gambling is the “rocket ship,” as Martin referred to it, that catapulted the tribe out of extreme poverty – it’s also unfair in the way it has obscured from view the accomplishments, savvy business moves and shared benefits that have been achieved by PCI. It’s also obscured the fact that, contrary to popular belief and popular rhetoric, the Poarch Creeks contribute tens of millions in tax dollars to the state of Alabama each year and have an annual economic impact around the state north of a billion dollars.
In almost any other context, such accomplishments would be heralded by state leaders. After all, lots of federally recognized tribes have been presented with the same opportunities to build gaming businesses, but few have used them to build, grow and give back at the levels at which the Poarch Creeks have.
Case in point: those same kids who were looking at dirt through the floorboards are today presiding over a business empire that controls one of the most profitable gaming businesses in the country and a non-gaming business portfolio that includes at least 15 separate companies and more than $250 million annually in federal contracts. PCI has partnered with Disney, the U.S. military, NASA and just about every major hospitality company in America, and some of the top names abroad.
The Poarch Band of Creek Indians Boys and Girls Club.
“When this thing took off, it was just like a rocket ship,” Martin said, as he described the decision to first put gambling machines in the tribe’s facility in Atmore. “I remember a month later sitting at the gaming board meeting and going over the financials and counting zeroes. I said, ‘Is that a million (expletive) dollars?’ I about fell out of my chair. I just couldn’t believe it. Now, we talk about a million dollars like it’s nothing some days, but it is. It still is to us, because we remember where this started and where we came from.”
Spend a little time with the folks leading PCI these days – Martin, Bryan, Arthur Mothershed and others – and you get the distinct impression that not only have they not forgotten where they came from, fixing the problems of their youth – the poverty, the discrimination, the neglect and the struggles – is what drives them. It’s what’s prompted them to take chances, to not back down from some fights, to run headlong into other fights and to continue building.
Following a tour of the recreation center, for example, after watching groups of pre-K kids sit through a class teaching the Poarch Creeks’ native language, Martin said walking through the building and knowing those classes were taking place, and that hundreds of kids would be coming for afterschool care later in the day, helped him “keep things straight.”
“If something goes wrong in Montgomery (with gambling legislation) at some point, and we have to scale back because the money isn’t coming in anymore, something over here is going to get cut,” he said. “What am I supposed to cut here? I don’t think I could bear it. That’s what I most want people to understand – this isn’t just about a casino or whatever. It’s about the people on this reservation. The kids who have these opportunities. The people who get this help.”
The Reservation 2024
There’s no mistaking that when you’re speaking to Martin, Mothershed, Bryan or one of the other directors, tribal council members or executives around PCI, there’s a familial feel to the conversations and interactions between them. They joke about past mischief and poke fun at one another over missteps and flubs. It’s a strange dynamic, to be honest, to on one day hear stories of the Poarch Creek CEO being hung from a fence by her britches when she was a little girl and then a few days later watch her lead a forum during the Tribal Nations Summit at the White House.
At the same time, though, there’s something incredibly endearing about it all – this sense of decent people who were presented a life-changing opportunity that they grabbed with both hands and didn’t let go. And along the way, they’re just trying to figure out how to best navigate it all – how to grow and protect the cash cow at the center while also using it to build other businesses that will serve the tribal community for generations and also calculate ways to serve that community.
There have been bumps and a few mistakes. There have been some people who were angered by choices that were made. But looking around the reservation today – and particularly when you juxtapose what you’re seeing with the level of poverty from just a generation ago – it’s hard to argue with the decisions that were made.
If you doubt this, take a stroll through the tribe’s senior center, with its custom apartments and everything-you-can-imagine senior services selection. In the large dining hall, which looks like the interior of a Montana resort-style lodge, seniors who live on site or in one of the many independent living homes can come for three meals a day. Or they can pick up at the curb. There’s a 50’s-themed diner in the back, too.
There’s an activity center, a gardening area, a library, a custom gym and a movie theater, where college football games dominate the weekends in the Fall. A full staff keeps everything in order.
“We serve about 250-300 meals per day to our seniors, and it has been a blessing,” said Martha Gookin, the director of the Lavan Martin Assisted Living Facility. “As we’ve been able to grow and offer more services, you can really tell a difference in the lives of our residents. We’re proud of it, and we’re proud of the difference it’s making for so many people who we owe so much.”
The Poarch Band of Creek Indians’ assisted living facility.
In addition to the new recreation center that includes basketball courts and classrooms, an art studio and athletic fields, and the sparkling senior center, there is also a currently-under-renovation health clinic. At the Buford L. Rolin Health Clinic, which offers medical, dental and vision services, tribal members and their families can receive preventative care and general medical care for pretty much any ailment for which a person would visit a general practitioner.
There’s also a full service lab, so there’s no waiting on test results, and there’s a state-of-the-art physical therapy wing. Everything short of surgery is offered in the full service dental suite, and the same is true for the optometry care.
The cost: Free.
“This is really the way health care should be treated by everyone, because it’s removed the money and just focused on care,” said Kelly Dirting, the director of Health and Human Services for the tribe. “You can see the difference that has been made in the health of our members. There are a lot of people, especially our elder members, who were in pretty poor shape but are now like different people. And the number of problems with common ailments that we were seeing a few years ago, we’re not seeing those in the same numbers because of the preventative measures that are in place.”
It’s worth noting that the healthcare services aren’t just available to Poarch Creek members. Members of other Native American tribes are also welcome at the clinic, and several in the south Alabama area take advantage.
That’s not an uncommon phenomenon for PCI. A number of the tribe’s projects, particularly infrastructure projects, benefit surrounding communities. Like the beefed up fire and police services. The state-of-the-art sewer services. The new water system. The thousands of miles of repaved roads in four different counties. The bridge repairs. The increased cell phone and wifi coverage areas.
“We have a number of public-private partnerships with municipalities that we’ve found to be beneficial on both sides, and in a few cases, they’re mainly just beneficial to the municipalities; basically, we fixed something because we have the means and manpower to do it that would have taken the county or city months, if not years, to get done,” Martin said. “Honestly, we do a lot of it just because we want to be a good neighbor. We want to help out when there’s a need. That’s just who we are.”
The Internal Debate
While there is definitely pride in all that has been accomplished over the last several decades for the Poarch Creeks, there also remains a tinge of uncertainty that’s probably to be expected from anyone who moved from abject poverty to tremendous wealth. Particularly when those people have their roots in the Christian faith.
That’s one thing that the Poarch Creeks – from top executive to tribal member – make abundantly clear: the reservation is a faith-based community. As such, many of the members struggle mightily with its reliance on gaming as its primary source of wealth. Bryan, the tribe’s CEO, said her own mother refused for years to even enter the doors of the Wind Creek casino in Atmore.
That faith has influenced other business decisions, as well, including who the tribe does business with and what types of businesses they’re willing to enter into. A discussion on legal marijuana sales on Native American lands – a phenomenon that the federal government is apparently OK with – promised to be a divisive topic for PCI officials until the tribe signed a deal to purchase a casino in Pennsylvania. That deal included language, required to obtain the state casino license, that took marijuana sales off the table.
But the struggle over the gambling issue remains for many. One way PCI officials have sought to address it – and an avenue that should be explored by Alabama officials – is by demonstrating the positives that can come from the revenue of the games.
“I’ve always believed that people are going to gamble if that’s what they want to do, and the best way to combat the negatives from that is to do good with the money that comes from it,” Bryan said. “Look at the differences in the quality of life for our tribal members now. Look at the opportunities we’ve been able to provide to so many children here. Look at their health care and senior care.
“I grew up in a religious family. To me, doing these good works and helping uplift the poorest people – and trust me, no one was poorer than we were – is what it’s about. I believe in doing the right things and giving people an opportunity. That’s what we’ve been able to do here.”
