The extent of the Black Belt in the United States. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the

The Black Belt is a region of the United States. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Although the term originally describes the prairies and dark soil of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi, it long has been used for a broad region in the American South characterized by a high population percentage of black people, acute poverty, rural decline, inadequate education programs, low educational attainment, poor health care, substandard housing, and high levels of crime and unemployment. Alabama (formally the State of Alabama;) is a State located in the southern region of the United States of America. Mississippi ( is a state located in the Deep South of the United States The Southern United States &mdashcommonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South &mdashconstitutes a large distinctive The term black people usually refers to a racial group of Humans with dark Skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse The most common measure of Poverty in the United States is the " poverty line " set by the U The educational attainment of the US population is similar to that of many other industrialized countries with the vast majority of the population having completed secondary education Crime in the United States is characterized by relatively high levels of Gun violence and Homicide, compared to other developed countries Unemployment occurs when a person is available to work and currently seeking work but the person is without work. While black residents are disproportionately affected, these problems apply to the region's general population. There are various definitions of the region, but it is generally a belt-like band through the center of the Deep South, stretching from as far north as Delaware to as far west as eastern Texas. The Deep South is a descriptive category of cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Delaware ( is a state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Texas ( is a state geographically located in the South Central United States and is also known as the Lone Star State.

History

Blacks as percentage of local population, 2000.

Black population density in the United States, 2000.

Black Belt is still used in the physiographic sense, describing a crescent-shaped region about 300 miles long and up to 25 miles wide, extending from southwest Tennessee to east-central Mississippi and then east through Alabama to the border with Georgia. Physical geography (also known as geosystems or physiography) is one of the three major subfields of Geography. Tennessee ( is a state located in the Southern United States. Mississippi ( is a state located in the Deep South of the United States Before the 19th century, this region was a mosaic of prairies and oak-hickory woods. ^[1] In the 1820s and 1830s, this region was identified as prime land for cotton plantations, resulting in a rush of immigrant planters and their slaves called Alabama Fever. As a social-economic system slavery is a legal institution under which a Person (called "a slave" is compelled to work for another The region became one of the cores of an expanding cotton plantation system that spread through much of the American South. A plantation economy is an Economy which is based on Agricultural mass production usually of a few staple products grown on large farms called Plantations Eventually, Black Belt came to describe the larger area of the South with historic ties to slave plantation agriculture and the cash crops cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco. In Agriculture, a cash crop is a crop which is grown for Money.

After the American Civil War, slave-based plantations were generally replaced by a system of sharecropping. Causes of the war See also Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War The coexistence of a slave-owning South Sharecropping is a system of agriculture or agricultural production in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e

Although this had been a richly productive region, the early 20th century brought a general economic collapse, among the many causes of which were soil erosion and depletion, the boll weevil invasion and subsequent collapse of the cotton economy, and the socially repressive Jim Crow laws. The boll weevil ( Anthonomus grandis) is a Beetle measuring an average length of six Millimeters which feeds on Cotton buds and flowers The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted primarily but not exclusively in the Southern and border states of the United States between 1876 and 1965 What had been one of the nation's wealthiest and most politically powerful regions became one of the poorest.

The mid-20th-century push for black Americans to be afforded civil rights equal to those of white Americans had roots in the center of the old Black Belt. The American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968 refers to the reform movements in the United States aimed at abolishing racial discrimination against African Despite the successes of the civil-rights movement, the Black Belt remains one of the nation's poorest and most distressed areas.

Most of the it remains rural, with a diverse range of crops, including most of the nation's peanut and soybean production. The peanut, or Groundnut ( Arachis hypogaea) is a species in the Legume family Fabaceae native to South America, Mexico Despite many changes caused by the social, economic, and cultural developments in the South, as well as the early-20th-century Great Migration of many blacks to other regions of the United States, the Black Belt is seen by some as a national territory of black people within the United States, where they have the right to self-determination, up to and including the right to independence. See also Second Great Migration (African American The Great Migration was the movement of approximately seven million African-Americans out of the Self-determination is defined as free choice of one’s own acts without external compulsion and especially as the freedom of the people of a given Territory to determine their Independence is the Self-government of a Nation, Country, or State by its residents and population or some portion thereof generally exercising ^[2]

Definitions

Counties in the United States where blacks are the majority of the population. The term black people usually refers to a racial group of Humans with dark Skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse

There are many definitions and geographic delineations of the Black Belt. One of the earliest and most frequently cited is that of Booker T. Washington, who wrote, in his 1901 autobiography, Up from Slavery,

The term was first used to designate a part of the country which was distinguished by the colour of the soil. Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5 1856 &ndash November 14 1915 was an American educator orator author and leader of the African-American community The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. Later and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a political sense—that is, to designate the counties where the black people outnumber the white.

In this definition, there are 96 counties with a black population percentage over 50%, of which 95 are distributed across the Coastal and Lowland South in a loose arc. ^[3]

W.E.B. Du Bois wrote about the Black Belt in his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (duːˈbɔɪz ( February 23, 1868 August 27, 1963) was an American Civil rights activist The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W

Other sources describe the Black Belt as "roughly 200 counties". ^[4] In 1936, sociologist Arthur Raper described the Black Belt as some 200 plantation counties with black population portions over 50%, lying "in a crescent from Virginia to Texas". ^[5]

In 2000, a United States Department of Agriculture report proposed creating a federal regional commission, similar to the Appalachian Regional Commission, to address the social and economic problems of the Black Belt. The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC is a United States federal-state partnership that works with the people of Appalachia to create opportunities for self-sustaining This politically defined region, called the Southern Black Belt, is a patchwork of 623 counties scattered throughout the South. ^[6][7]

See also

• List of topics related to Black and African people
• Harry Haywood
• Freedom Road Socialist Organization
• Republic of New Afrika
• History of slavery in the United States
• Allen Tullos, "The Black Belt" Southern Spaces

References

Further reading

• Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (1935), ISBN 0-689-70820-3
• Haywood, Harry. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978.
• Wimberley, Ronald C. and Libby V. Morris. The Southern Black Belt: A National Perspective. Lexington: TVA Rural Studies and The University of Kentucky, 1997.
• Washington, Booker T. (1901) Up From Slavery: An Autobiography. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co.
• Up From Slavery, available at Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works

External links

• The Third International and the Struggle for a Correct Line on the African American National Question; Freedom Road Socialist Organization
• Mapping History: The Darkwing Atlas Project; "Cotton Production in the American South: 1790-1860" interactive map