The Black Belt is a region in the southeastern United States that is characterized by a predominance of the African American population outside urban agglomerations. There are no clear boundaries of the region, but it is roughly described as a strip passing through the center of the Deep South from the northeast to the southwest.
Content
Definitions
The most famous definition of the Black Belt was given in an autobiography called Up from Slavery ( 1901 ) by an African-American public figure Booker T. Washington .
The term was originally used to refer to the part of a country that was determined by the color of the soil . That part of the country in which the soil was fat, dark and rich was, of course, that part of the South, where the slaves were most profitable, and there as a result they were brought in the largest quantities. Later, especially after the war , the term seems to be used exclusively in a political sense - that is, to designate the districts where there are more blacks than whites.
Original Text (Eng.)It was the first time it was used. This is where the slaves were the most profitable. It is where the white people outnumber is worn.- Booker T. Washington
If we accept this definition, then in modern times the Black Belt consists (according to the US 2000 census ) of 95 districts, in which the African American population exceeds 50%. [1] Other sources call a figure of about 200 counties. [2]
The black belt extends from northeast to southwest, from Delaware and Virginia to east Texas .
See also
- Blacks
- Slavery in the USA
- South USA
- Deep south
Notes
- ↑ The Black Population: Census 2000 Brief (English) (inaccessible link) . US Census Bureau . The date of circulation is November 11, 2009. Archived October 23, 2009.
- ↑ Allen Tullos. The Black Belt (English) (inaccessible link) . Southern Spaces. The date of circulation is November 11, 2009. Archived on March 7, 2006.
Bibliography
- Du Bois, WE 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.