The Southeast Crescent Regional Commission Coalition was created in Fall 2019 for the purpose of activating the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission. The SCRC was established in 2008 to make direct federal investment in the Southeastern United States to have an impact on systemic, persistent poverty in the region.

The Southeast Crescent region of the US, often referred to as the US Blackbelt is challenged with economic indicators that are in many cases parallel with those of an emerging nation. 

Early in the same year as his death, President Kennedy, moved by the extreme poverty conditions that he found in Appalachia established the "President's Appalachian Regional Commission" to support the advancement of federal legislation to make direct federal investment in the region. Two years after his death, Congress passed the Appalachian Redevelopment Act, thereby creating the ARC as a federal agency. 

Today, the ARC is responsible for the Appalachian Development Highway System, has invested and leveraged billions of dollars in infrastructure, industry, workforce development, education, regional analysis and other strategic investments to benefit the region and people of Appalachia. Outside of the Appalachian region of the country, the Blackbelt is the next largest contiguous region of systemic, persistent poverty in the US. 

A 2002 study found that “If the economic gaps with the ARC were eliminated in the service sector alone, the Southeast Region would: 

• Enjoy additional income of $15 billion. 

• Boast 500,000 additional jobs. 

• Return $3.2 billion to government coffers— $1 billion to state and local governments and an additional $2.2 billion to the federal treasury.” UGA, 2002