History: Cairo, Ill.: Waiting For A Rebirth

How does a place seared by its past find its future? How does it move on, even as the nation as a whole is burying its history every minute with the invention of the next microchip or the launch of a new dotcom? "We can't worry about what's going on on Wall Street," says Mayor James Wilson. "We've got to worry about what's going on on Main Street." And right now, Cairo's Main Street is like an open scar left over from the day in 1967 when a black man was found hanged in jail and the town blew wide open. At the turn of the century, Cairo had vied with Chicago and St. Louis to be the commercial capital of the Midwest, with money pouring in off the barges and trains that converged at this point, where the Ohio and the Mississippi conjoin. But the levees it erected to keep the floods out also hemmed Cairo in. Now the town wants to extract itself from its history by using it. The 1872 Customs House has been turned into a museum, glorifying its days of big grain and big gambling. The old Gem Theater is being restored. And the Riverlore mansion, once owned by a riverboat captain, is being converted into a bed-and-breakfast. There's a plan to rent out the dead downtown stores for a $1 a year. And Cairo has even secured a $1.5 million grant to give Main Street its original cobblestone beauty, with streetlights for evening strolling. No one is strolling yet. History has taught Cairo to hold its breath.