How 4 Black Alabama women went door-to-door persuading people to get jabbed in one of the least vaccinated US states

• Alabama has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the US.
• Black community leaders have been going door-to-door to fight misinformation and get shots in arms.
• Four told Insider the work was draining but had worked because their communities trusted them.

Dorothy Oliver has about six people left to go.

Since COVID-19 vaccines were introduced, customers at her general store haven't been able to stop by without Oliver gently prodding them about getting the shot. And if you're not grocery shopping, she'll phone you up.

"I have made a million phone calls, I'll put it like that," she told Insider.

The retiree runs one of the few shops in Panola, Alabama, a predominantly Black rural community of about 400 people, many of whom she says feel largely overlooked by health authorities.

But thanks to her and a handful of volunteers, nearly all of them have had their shot.

At time of writing, Alabama hovered in 41st place on The New York Times' list of states in order of vaccination, with about 52% of the population fully vaccinated. In Sumter County, which straddles the Mississippi border southwest of Tuscaloosa and includes Panola, that number drops to 42%. And until Oliver got busy, it looked as if it would have been the same in Panola.

The hamlet is about 35 miles from the nearest vaccination center, and people were too fearful, were too disengaged, or simply didn't have enough information to organize a shot, she said.

Oliver was particularly worried for the older folks, who have less access to online information but are at higher risk from COVID-19. So she decided to do something about it.

"I said, well, you know what? I need to go head-on and start talking to these older people to make sure that you know - people would put a lot of bad stuff in their heads, you know?" she said.

Oliver is backed up by an old partner in community action, Drucilla Russ-Jackson, a Sumter County commissioner. Russ-Jackson pulled together resources from the state health board and the National Guard.

Oliver's and Russ-Jackson's efforts were documented in The New Yorker's short film "The Panola Project" by Rachael DeCruz and Jeremy S. Levine.

Strategy consisted mainly of rational conversations and kindly pressure.

"You cannot go to them saying, 'You've got to do this, uh-uh,'" Oliver told Insider, mimicking an aggressive tone. "You've got to go tell them in a calm manner and let them know how serious this is."

Humor also played its part with reluctant people, as Russ-Jackson, the county commissioner, told Insider. "I tell them, 'OK, well, I'll just get my dress ready so I can go to your funeral.'"

Hesitancy, fear, and access

The persistent idea that Black people are among the most vaccine-hesitant groups was dented by a July poll by Ipsos and Axios that found white conservatives were more resistant still.

Like Oliver and Russ-Jackson in Panola, Sheila Tyson, a commissioner in Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham, became a vaccine advocate early on, going door-to-door with volunteers about once a week. Her area covers both low-income Black communities as well as white ones.

For Tyson, the barrier to getting people of color vaccinated was at least as much to do with access as hesitancy.

"When we go into the Black low-income areas, a lot of them have started taking the shot, it's picking up," she said.

"But when we go into the white low-income areas, a lot of them, they believe in Trump so bad and in taking that horse medicine and all that."

She was referring to ivermectin, a drug with approved uses in both people and animals that has become widely touted in some circles as a COVID-19 treatment despite no conclusive evidence it is effective as such.

Tyson noticed that despite emerging white right-wing resistance to COVID-19 vaccines, authorities "put it in the white areas first."

"I was raising so much hell around here," she continued.

As Bloomberg reported in February, a rollout that ignored racial disparities soon produced a glaring problem. The majority-Black poorest district in Birmingham - part of Tyson's district - waited for vaccines while a nearby town, the state's wealthiest, got them.

And then, Tyson said, many white conservatives didn't even want it. "You know, these dumbasses," she told Insider. "It pissed me off so bad. They didn't want to take the shot. We wanted the shot."

When she goes door-to-door in low-income white areas, she often asks the sheriff to keep a presence nearby, "because we do get cussed out and stuff," she said.

Some of the white people she talks to tell her the coronavirus was put out by Democrats to kill Black people and Hispanics, she said. "And when that couldn't kill us, they put out the shot to kill us," is the rationale, she said.

But among communities of color, such fictions are overshadowed by real histories of medical racism that continue to have an influence.

Often mentioned in Tyson's conversations are the story of Henrietta Lacks - the Black Virginian whose cancer cells were harvested without her permission - and the 1932 Tuskegee study in Alabama.

The study, which left a group of Black men untreated for syphilis as part of a 40-year experiment, took place less than an hour from where Tyson goes door-to-door with vaccine outreach.

In Panola, Oliver said a common response she had from young people was that they were somehow test subjects. "'They didn't do enough scientific on this stuff,'" she paraphrased. "'They didn't work on it long enough.'"

One resident who appeared in the New Yorker film, named LaDenzel, hesitated a long time.

"He said: 'Miss Dorothy, I'm just scared. I'm just actually scared,'" Oliver told Insider.

Meet people where they are

Tyson has also sent volunteers, like a 63-year-old retired teacher named Materia Johnson, to staff information desks at places like food drives and job fairs. It's the same tactic Tyson has used for years to sign up unregistered voters.

Johnson has heard every excuse in the book from behind her table, whether worries about side effects or the fear the vaccine was developed too fast. The young, she said, are most resistant.

One 26-year-old woman told her she was planning to rely on "natural supplements," believing that she would never get sick anyway, Johnson said.

"It's that age group, you know, I think they're just getting misinformation out on the internet and amongst their friends," Johnson told Insider.

Johnson's tactic is to ask people, quite simply, "If you come down with COVID, what is your plan?" and then break down the many pitfalls and logical fallacies in any plan other than getting vaccinated.

But the effort is mentally draining, she said. "I talked to my friends about how disturbing it was for me to just to hear their reasons for not being vaccinated," she told Insider. One person in 10 getting vaccinated on account of her work is "a good day," she said.

"They're basically calm and steadfast in their beliefs," she said. "It's just: 'This is what I believe. And then you can't convince me otherwise.'"

Relationships are as important as information

Johnson's information table is just one tactic to get shots in arms.

Oliver keeps a list, and has driven out to remote Panola homes to flush out people she has not heard back from. Prize draws have been popular in both places - one of which Russ-Jackson said she paid for personally.

But the most successful methods have one important thing in common, according to Lee McIntyre, a philosopher and ethicist at Boston University.

McIntyre has written extensively about public trust in science and how scientists can respond to misinformation. What really is at work here is the decades-deep well of trust Tyson, Russ-Jackson, and Oliver have built up in their community work, he said.

"In this case, it's not just about doubt - it's about distrust," he told Insider. "Doubt can be overcome with factual information, but trust has to be built through engagement and personal relationships."

Tyson told Insider that the people she talked to often didn't trust or watch the news but that she pulled up reliable articles on her phone to show them anyway. Because they know and trust her, she observed, the facts presented by the news outlets suddenly gain power.

Oliver feels the same way. "That's why I was so successful in my area, because a lot of them know me," she said.

It's not easy work, as Tyson said, but she framed it as just another battle.

"I have had to work like hell for everything I have ever got in my whole life," she said. "Nothing came easy for me. I feel like this is something else, this is just another challenge, another stepping-stone in the road I've got to cross."