PERRY, Iowa — In an America that often seems more divided, there remains one event that brings people together: the Fourth of July.

The residents of Perry, Iowa, a farming and meatpacking town of 7,800, 45 minutes northwest of Des Moines, joined across party and ethnic lines – over a third of residents are Hispanic — to celebrate the 242nd anniversary of America’s freedom.

Perched in front of his home on Wills Avenue, town educator Eddie Diaz and members of his young family watched excitedly as the town’s annual parade passed.

Diaz, who is 39, said he came to Perry during the mid-1990s, when there was a large influx of Hispanics into the area, making Perry newly diverse. Until this spring, he was principal of St. Patrick’s Catholic School.

“We have a lot of people living here from Latino backgrounds and we have a small refugee population,” he said. “There are always tensions and frictions in any community, but it’s more between individuals than groups.”

Diaz said that when the demographic change came to the previously all-white community, some white people began to leave.

“The people who were less accepting of diversity have chosen to leave the town and so the people that have stayed are more accepting,” Diaz said. “I don’t put too much thought into the people that leave. I think it’s unfortunate. But as an educator and a father, I have to focus on the positivity that is in the community.”

He said that the small community “creates positive change” every day for the future of its children.

“I teach my children that we are all Americans, we’re here for the same thing and ultimately if we want to live in a happy society, we have to help each other and get along,” he said.

As the parade flowed down the street, community members left their porches to follow the parade into the town park, Pattee Park, for music, food, dancing and games.

Jerry Roberts from nearby Jefferson, Iowa, took a break from enjoying the fun to discuss where America stands today, recognizing the divides the country is facing.

“There are religious divides and, within religion, there are divides within that …,” he said. “And then you have regional divides and now you get into political divides.”

Roberts added that, while these issues are happening, people aren’t talking with each other about it very effectively.

“You’ve got to sit down and be able to talk problems and instead, we just shout at each other,” he said.

Lauri Haynes, who was cooking kettle corn at the park, echoed Roberts. She described the country as like a “junior high school cafeteria.”

“It’s like everyone’s reading headlines and making opinions based on one person and it’s juvenile,” Haynes said.

After packing up our things from the farmhouse where the News21 crew were guests, we headed eastward.

The next stop was Carbon Hill, Illinois, a predominately white town of 345 residents, about an hour southeast of Chicago. The fellows stepped inside Mustachios, a bar on North Third Street and West Lacey Street.

Diane Eartly, co-owner of the bar, grew up in Coal City, Illinois, another village five minutes from Carbon Hill where “everybody knows everybody.”

While growing up, Eartly said she didn’t notice many divides in the country.

Today, as she still resides in the small town, she noticed that America “is changing.”

Too many people are spending time on their cellphones, shopping online, dating online, and not talking to each other or supporting their local stores, she said.

Stephanie Long, a bartender at Mustachios, said she was a Bernie Sanders supporter when he was running for president.

“There’s a lot of growing that needs to be done, but I’m hoping (America) will get better,” she said.

News21 fellow Penelope Blackwell contributed to this report.

Follow the News21 blog for updates as the team reports on the road.

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TEKAMAH, Neb. — Since the start of the State of Hate road trip, the News21 road warriors traveled more than 3,000 miles and reported in Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and South Dakota, before they arrived in Nebraska.

The first stop was Tekamah in Burt County, Nebraska, a town of 1,852 people about 46 miles northwest of Omaha.

Construction workers Frankie McCandless and Keith Terwilliger – in town from Tennessee on a job – were eating lunch at the Subway sandwich shop on South 13th Street.

News21 asked them about the state of the country and both agreed that there are divides, but not along race lines.

The two men said issues in the country today are over jobs and the economy, and everyone is affected by them, creating frictions among different groups.

“The way I look at it, it ain’t just one color, it’s all colors…,” McCandless said. “Everybody needs to get out and get a job and pull their own weight.”

Some people are able to work and they still get government money and everything else, he said.

Terwilliger echoed his thoughts.

“Welfare and food stamps are well and fine, but they are made for a purpose, but not as a way of life,” Terwilliger said.

McCandless and Terwilliger applauded President Donald Trump, saying he’s doing a good job, especially when it comes to the economy.

They said they are hoping the divide in the country closes if the president succeeds at making the economy better.

“There are more jobs now than there have been in decades in this country,” Terwilliger said. “He is standing up for our manufacturers, our farmers, for our foreign trade. It has been totally lopsided. All the other countries put terrible tariffs on us.”

Terwilliger added that people are worrying too much about issues like immigration policies.

“Too many people are crying and moaning about every little thing,” Terwilliger said. “Everybody is just too tender. Everything upsets everybody.”

McCandless added: “Everyone needs to get along instead of fighting with each other.”

Down the road from the Subway, Larry Bucy was selling fireworks at a fireworks stand with the words “Tekamah Area Vet” written in red paint out front.

Bucy said the media was blowing news events out of proportion, creating divides.

“If you just look around, it seems like we’re OK,” he said. “Then if you watch the national news, it’s going to hell in a handbag.”

Driving closer to Omaha, the next stop was in Fremont, Nebraska, a booming town of 26,000 that has a Hormel Foods hog-processing plant that produces Spam and other products. In 2017, Costco broke ground for a chicken processing plant, which is scheduled to open in 2019.

Glen Ellis, 54, has lived in Fremont for 14 years and owns Milady Coffeehouse, in the city’s historic downtown.

“We’ve gotten away from civility,” he said. “When I grew up, the reds and the blues could talk and share different opinions and not have a hatred. It seems like it has gotten worse and worse. It seems like the older I’ve gotten, I sense it more.”

Ellis is running for the Fremont City Council. His goal, he said, is to help people feel welcome in his town regardless of who they are.

Fremont made national news in 2010 when the Fremont City Council passed an ordinance to prohibit renting to illegal immigrants. Additionally, the ordinance requires all new renters to purchase a $5 permit from the city and swear they have permission to live in the country legally.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined in 2014 to hear a challenge on the city’s ordinance and the law has been enforced since that year.

Ellis said his town is more than that and, in his campaign, he stresses that Fremont is a welcoming city. He pointed to the town’s Latino community, many of whom were drawn to the town because of the meatpacking plant.

“We got a lot of loving people here in Fremont,” Ellis said.

News21 fellows Catherine Devine, Penelope Blackwell and Lenny Martinez Dominguez contributed to this report.

Follow the News21 blog for updates as the team reports on the road.

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TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — It was a quiet afternoon for Kari Wilson, a bartender at The Virginian Bar in Twentynine Palms, a desert town of about 26,000 people on the edge of California’s Joshua Tree National Forest and the vast Mojave Desert.

Retirees and Marine Corps pilots from the nearby Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base are the usual patrons, but on this day, it’s four journalism students on a road trip examining “Hate in America.”

Wilson, 26, joined the U.S. Navy four years ago. The Navy showed her the world, including to Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan and Syria, so she’s been around. She said she now loves working at the desert town bar and visiting with the people that stop by.

She greeted customers with a smile, but the conversation quickly turned serious when she was asked about her thoughts on the current state of America — politically and racially.

“We’re divided and anyone who thinks otherwise is really out of the loop,” Wilson said. “It’s really sad.”

Maybe the rest of America could learn from bars like hers, she said.

“In the big picture, we’re all divided and then you go to a bar and suddenly everyone is talking to each other,” Wilson said. “Why can’t that just happen big picture-wise? Everybody just needs to grab a drink and meet up or something.”

Wedda Warrick and Laurette Rogers, customers that day at the bar, overheard Wilson’s responses and chimed in.

“Sweetness,” as Warrick addressed this reporter, “the states have always had this bias” when it refers to people of color, she said. “You see bias all the time.”

She said bias turned to violence in 2015 when 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. It deeply upset her because it reminded her that hate still exists in the country.

She recalled traveling through Alabama in the early 1960s, about the time of the civil rights movement. Her family pulled up to a gas station and she remembered seeing two water fountains – one for white people and the other for black people.

“The black fountain had mucus and spit in it,” she said. “It was disgusting.”

Warrick said she grew up “old-school” as a kid in the 1950s and ‘60s, with her mother staying at home and her father working full-time. When Warrick joined the workforce, she said she was hired by companies and places that needed to meet a “diversity quota.”

“If you were a woman, they were hiring you,” Warrick said. “If you were black, they were hiring you. If you were of ethnic heritage, they were hiring you because they had to fill quotas. And, yes, I was one of the ones they had to fill a quota with.”

Rogers was at first quiet, but then she spoke up.

“I was raised on the East Coast by my parents and grandparents,” Rogers said. “If you ever said the ‘n’ word, you got your mouth washed with soap because that’s not the way we were raised.”

Warrick is hopeful there will be more love than hate in the near future. Rogers agreed with her friend, but had a final thought on the state of the country.

“It’s all about how you were raised,” Rogers said. “If you were raised by bigoted parents, you’re bigoted. If you’re not raised by bigoted parents, you take people as they are. And that’s all it’s down to.”

News21 fellows Catherine Devine, Penelope Blackwell and Lenny Martinez Dominguez contributed to this report.

Follow the News21 blog for updates as the team reports on the road.

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