Black Belt (American South)

“ Another solution of the problem is often suggested, viz. the crowding out of the blacks from the Black Belt by the whites—especially northerners and Germans—who want to cultivate the Black Belt lands, who settle in colonies, and who have no place for the negro in their plans of industrial society. The Black Belt landlords are becoming weary of negro labor, and some are disposed to make special inducements to get whites to settle in the Black Belt. ”

“ To-day, then, my reader, let us turn our faces to the Black Belt of Georgia and seek simply to know the condition of the black farm-laborers of one county there.
Here in 1890 lived ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The country is rich, yet the people are poor. The keynote of the Black Belt is debt; not commercial credit, but debt in the sense of continued inability on the part of the mass of the population to make income cover expense. This is the direct heritage of the South from the wasteful economies of the slave régime ”

“ All of these sorrows the Negro has endured with patience and long suffering, and they may be all classed as the secondary cause of this great exodus.
The primary cause is economics. The storms and floods destroy crops in the Black Belt section. These people are hungry, they are naked, they have no corn and had no cotton; so they are without food and clothes. What else can they do but go away in search of work? There are a great many wealthy white men here and there throughout the Black Belt section. ”

“ This oppression is greatest where the Negro population is greatest. The Negro population happens to be greater in the South than in the North, therefore, he is more oppressed in the South than in the North.
Take the counties in our own state. Some are known as white counties and others as black counties. In the white counties the Negro is given better educational opportunities than in the black counties. I have in mind one Black Belt county where the white child is given fifteen dollars a year for his education and the Negro child thirty cents a year. ”

“ The people and the country were so desperately poor that the stranger would never think of settling there. Many of the whites in moderate circumstances, living near the Black Belt, took advantage of the low price of rich lands, and acquired small farms in the prairies, but there was no influx of white labor to the Black Belt from the white counties. ”

“ Thus it is that in the country districts of the South, by written or unwritten law, peonage, hindrances to the migration of labor, and a system of white patronage exists over large areas. Besides this, the chance for lawless oppression and illegal exactions is vastly greater in the country than in the city, and nearly all the more serious race disturbances of the last decade have arisen from disputes in the county between master and man,—as, for instance, the Sam Hose affair. As a result of such a situation, there arose, first, the Black Belt ”

“ Establishment of the State Unity of the Black Belt. At the present time this Negro zone-precisely for the purpose of facilitating national oppression-is artificially split up and divided into a number of various states which include distant localities having a majority of white population. If the right of self-determination of the Negroes is to be put into force, it is necessary wherever possible to bring together into one governmental unit all districts of the South where the majority of the settled population consists of negroes. ”

“ For the hum of the cotton-mills is the newest and most significant thing in the New South to-day. All through the Carolinas and Georgia, away down to Mexico, rise these gaunt red buildings, bare and homely, and yet so busy and noisy withal that they scarce seem to belong to the slow and sleepy land. Perhaps they sprang from dragons' teeth. So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre. Even the markets that once defied the parvenu have crept one by one across the seas, and then slowly and reluctantly, but surely, have started toward the Black Belt. ”

“ Practically, all the land in the black belt of the South is cultivated by Negroes and the farm production has decreased so rapidly during the last ten or fifteen years that the average Negro farmer hardly makes sufficient to pay his rent and buy the few necessaries of life. ”

“ In fact, the few immigrants who have gone into that section have, in many instances, been oppressed almost as much as the Negroes, many have gone to other parts of the country or have returned to their homes. So we find ourselves face to face with large and fertile agricultural areas in the South with no labor to till them.
The remedy of these evils lies in the Negro himself. He is best suited to the work, best adapted to the climate, and understands the southern white man better than anyone else. Furthermore, he knows the white man ”

“ In this general neighborhood, from Thirty-ninth to Fifty-ninth streets and from State Street to Lake Michigan, hostility toward Negroes has been plainly and even forcibly expressed through organized efforts to oust them and prevent their further encroachment. The situation is peculiar. This is the part of the old South Side in which most of the Negro population of Chicago has settled. The so-called "Black Belt" has been overcrowded for years. Old and deteriorated housing and its insufficiency have been steadily driving Negroes out of it in search of other homes. ”

“ When raiders came, the negroes saved the family valuables and concealed the farm cattle in the swamps, and though often mistreated by the plundering soldiers because they had hidden the property, they were faithful. Women and children felt safer then, when nearly all the white men were away, than they have ever felt since among free negroes. [584] The Black Belt could never again send out one-half as many whites to war, in proportion, as in 1861-1865. ”

“ A large majority of the white men in the South believe that this problem is to be solved by the Negro “learning his place” and keeping in it. Though they do not say just what this place is, they purpose to teach it to the Negro by disfranchisement, by limiting his education, by discrimination on the streets and on the railroads, by barring him from public parks, public libraries, and public amusements of any kind, by insulting replies to courteous questions, by conviction for trivial offences, and, finally, by judge lynch and the shot gun. This class is called the rabble. ”

“ They were sought for as partners or as overseers by those who hoped that northern men could control free negro labor. Lands were sold or leased at low prices, and many soldiers, especially officers, decided to buy land and raise cotton. Numbers of large plantations in the Black Belt were bought or leased by officers of the army, all of whom had lofty ideas as to what they were going to do. The soil was fertile, cotton was selling for high prices, and the free blacks, they were sure, would work for them out of gratitude and trust. ”

“ If you were to ask the average white man of the South today what is the greatest menace to this section, his answer, undoubtedly, would be, the Negro and Negro domination. At least this would be the answer of the politician. That he would take this view, is shown by the great amount of legislation that has been enacted, aiming either directly or indirectly to retard the Negro’s progress. I do not believe that [Pg 87] there has been one piece of legislation enacted in the South within the last thirty years for the express purpose of promoting the Negro’s welfare. ”

“ In some of these neighborhoods whites and Negroes have become adjusted to one another; in others they have not. One of these adjusted areas is the so-called "Black Belt." Because 90 per cent of the Negroes of Chicago live there, it is usually assumed that the area is 90 per cent Negro. The fact is very different. The most densely populated section of the South Side area, between Roosevelt Road and Thirty-ninth Street, Wentworth Avenue and Lake Michigan, has a population of 54,906 Negroes and 42,797 whites. ”

“ There are thousands of white men and women throughout the length and breadth of the South, who are today, laboring almost incessantly for the advancement of the Negro. To these, we owe a great debt of gratitude, and to these should be given much credit for what has been accomplished. This class of white southerns are not, as a rule, politicians and it is seldom, if ever, they are elected to office. When we speak of the average southern white man then, we have particular reference to the great horde of office seekers and politicians that infest the entire south-land. ”

“ It is reasonable to believe that the colored people, if provided with proper housing facilities and an area sufficient in extent, would voluntarily segregate themselves. The present neighborhood known as the "Black Belt" could, by reasonable public improvement, assisted by our leading public citizens, be made a decent place to live in for a much larger population than it now accommodates.... This movement should enlist the financial and moral support of the industries employing large numbers of the black race. ”

“ If we reduce the increase of the whites in the Black Belt by 3 per cent so as to bring it to the normal American rate, their gain upon the negroes during the last ten years will appear to be very trifling. ”

“ Of the negroes, as of every race or community, we may consider the lowest stratum, the great mass, and the leaders. Regarding not morality only, but general conditions, there is a considerable element of the Southern blacks whose condition is most pitiable. Such especially are many of the peasants of the Black Belt; barely able to support themselves, often plundered with more or less of legality by landlord and storekeeper, shut up to heavy, dull, almost hopeless lives. ”

“ It will be said, however, that such drastic action is not general in the South; but throughout the Black Belt the negroes suffer from arrests and impositions for petty offenses which make their lives sometimes miserable. The large number of negroes owning automobiles is a source of many conflicts. Many collisions, possibly avoidable, have resulted in wresting from the negroes concerned excessive damages which go to increase the returns of the courts. ”

“ The figures given by the unsentimental census-taker showing that during the past decade there has been an increase of about 34 per cent. of this race in our population does not indicate that the black belt stretching along our Southern horizon is likely to fade away. The negro is here to stay, and in adjusting him to our natural life we are faced by a permanent, not a temporary problem. ”

“ The South cannot hire that class of Negroes from their work. This, again has a tendency to make labor scarce. Added to this is the fact that thousands of Negroes are moving into the cities. Some are going into other states seeking on the one hand better educational opportunities for their children, and on the other hand, protection from mobs and lynchers. This again has a depressing effect upon labor. ”

“ He only asks that he may share in this democracy.
Already there are practically 200,000 Negroes who [Pg 121] have been called to the colors and thousands of others are expected to be called. I hear of but few if any slackers among them, while thousands of slackers of other races are being rounded up by the police in various cities throughout the country.
The 200,000 Negro soldiers who are now at the front and in the camps have gone with as brave hearts as any American citizen. ”

“ That there are lazy, worthless and criminal Negroes, we do not deny, but we do deny that as a race they are such.
The facts are these: first, the South, unlike other sections of the country, has not had thousands of immigrants to come into her borders year after year to do her work, but has depended solely upon the increase in her native population for this purpose. This increase has not kept pace with the marvellous growth and development of that section, hence, the cry for labor. Second, scarcity of labor in that section is due in part, to ignorance and a false idea of real freedom. ”

“ There were the whites of the Black Belt, the former slaveholders, who wished well to the negro, favored negro education, and looked upon his political activity as a joke, but who came nearer than any other white people to recognizing the possibility of permanent political privileges for the black. ”

“ The situation along State Street from Sixteenth Street south is an illustration.
So whenever prostitutes, cadets, and thugs were located among white people and had to be moved for commercial or other reasons, they were driven to undesirable parts of the city, the so-called colored residential sections.
Most of the vicious resorts in the "Black Belt" are owned and operated by whites and are not interfered with by the authorities. Protests from Negroes have never succeeded in removing them. ”

“ They are persecuted, despised, rejected, and discriminated against before every court in the South. Since the Negro is now being lynched as readily for his sins of omission as he is for his sins of commission, it is quite necessary for him when traveling in the South, to keep constantly in telegraphic communication with the agent at the station ahead as to the movement of the mob. In addition to this, the Negro is subjected to many other forms of persecution and discrimination in almost every walk of life. These things go to make up what we call the Negro problem. ”

“ It cannot be disguised that in spite of the most earnest efforts of their old master to conciliate and satisfy them, the estrangement between races increases in its extent and bitterness. Nearly all the negro men are armed with repeaters, and many of them carry them openly, day and night.
The relations between the races were better, however, than conditions seemed to indicate. The whites of the Black Belt were better disposed toward the negroes than were those of the white districts. ”