Black Belt (United States)

“ Rather, their majority-black districts are anchored by three separate high-density clusters of black residents in three separate metropolitan areas, two of them outside the Black Belt. The Black Belt’s largely rural remainder is then divided between the two districts to the extent needed to fill out their population numbers with black majorities in both. Respect for the Black Belt as a community of interest cannot explain this approach. ”

“ Nice respectable persons dare not visit it unless heavily escorted. The "East Side" in New York provokes a shiver by the very sound of the name. The "Black Belt" carries the same dark background of hovering evil. One is expected to regard black belts as isolated plague-spots full of lurking pitfalls for unsuspecting innocents. ”

“ The Black Belt, as it is to-day, is a menace to the country from Mississippi to Maine, because it is black with the darkness of idleness and ignorance and immorality. It must soon be decided whether it shall grow darker and darker, or shall come to shine, bright as the Belt of Orion, with the light of intelligence and industry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Be the cause what it may, a prejudice, strong, unrelenting, barred the two races from enjoying with the white race equal civil and political rights in the United States. So very strong had that prejudice grown since the Revolution, enhanced it may be by slavery and docility, that when the rebellion of 1861 burst forth, a feeling stronger than law, like a Chinese wall only more impregnable, encircled the negro, and formed a barrier betwixt him and the army. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Negro suffrage, they thought, would take the wind out of the radical sails, the Southern whites would soon be able to control the blacks, representation in Congress would be increased, and the Black Belt would perhaps regain its former political hegemony. ”

“ In 1838 there was another anti-Negro riot and in 1842, when the blacks attempted to celebrate abolition in the West Indies. Pittsburg had a riot in 1839 and New York in 1843 and 1863. [127]
Thus we can see that the fear and heart searchings and mental upheaval of those who saw the anomaly of slavery in the United States was based not only upon theoretical democracy but on force and fear of force as used by the degraded blacks, and on the reaction of that appeal on southern legislatures and northern mobs. ”

“ Those who have visited only the cities and towns of the South have not seen the black South. In the six Southern states containing what has been called the Black Belt there are four millions of negro people. Less than half a million of these live in the cities, towns, and villages, while more than three millions and a half of them dwell on the plantations of the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the shiftless, ignorant, superstitious, and criminal class of Negroes is increasing, it is because the ruling class of white men have been limiting his education, disfranchising him, and in other ways trying to doom him to serfdom. The great race riot in Atlanta was simply the culmination of the ten months’ campaigning of race hatred. Men who are now writing resolutions and sound and sane editorials, were then rivaling each other in their abuse of the Negro. ”

“ The lawlessness of the negroes in parts of the Black Belt and the disturbing influences of the black troops, of some officials of the Bureau, and of some of the missionary teachers and preachers, caused the whites to fear insurrections and to take measures for protection. ”

“ The police were apparently powerless to cope with these numerous assaults. Four Negro men and one white assailant were killed, and thirty Negro men were severely beaten in the street-car clashes.
The "Black Belt" contributed its share of violence to the record of Monday afternoon and night. Rumors of white depredations and killings were current among the Negroes and led to acts of retaliation. An aged Italian peddler, one Lazzeroni, was set upon by young Negro boys and stabbed to death. Eugene Temple, white laundryman, was stabbed to death and robbed by three Negroes. ”

“ The rebels are everywhere using the late anti-Negro riots in the North—as they have long used your officers’ treatment of Negroes in the South—to convince the slaves that they have nothing to hope from a Union success—that we mean in that case to sell them into bitter bondage to defray the cost of the war. Let them impress this as a truth on the great mass of their ignorant and credulous bondsmen, and the Union will never be restored—never. We cannot conquer ten millions of people united in solid phalanx against us, powerfully aided by northern sympathizers and European allies. ”

“ The recruiting officer, in the first year of the enlistment of negroes, did not have a pleasant service to perform. At New Orleans there was no trouble in recruiting the regiments organized under Butler's command, for, beside the free negroes, the slave population for miles around were eager to enlist, believing that with the United States army uniform on, they would be safe in their escape from "ole master and the rebs." And then the action of the confederate authorities in arming the free negroes lent a stimulant and gave an ambition to the whole slave population to be soldiers. ”

“ It is unpleasant here, in view of the valuable services rendered by the Phalanx, to be obliged to record that the black soldiers were subjected to many indignities, and suffered much at the hands of their white fellow comrades in arms. Repeated assaults and outrages were committed upon black men wearing the United States' uniform, not only by volunteers but conscripts from the various States, and frequently by confederate prisoners who had been paroled by the United States ”

“ As the war for the Union recedes into the misty shadows of the past, and the Negro is no longer needed to assault forts and stop rebel bullets, he is in some sense, of less importance. Peace with the old master class has been war to the Negro. As the one has risen, the other has fallen. The reaction has been sudden, marked, and violent. It has swept the Negro from all the legislative halls of the Southern States, and from those of the Congress of the United States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many writers and artists have found hidden inspiration in their Negro blood and from the first importation in the fifteenth century down to today there has been a continual mingling of white and Negro blood in the United States both within and without the bonds of wedlock that neither law nor slavery nor cruel insult and contempt has been able to stop.
Besides these influences in economics and the home there has come the work of Negro women in revolt which cannot be forgotten. ”

“ There are now in the service of the United States near two hundred thousand able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending and acquiring Union territory. The Democratic strategy demands that these forces be disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated by restoring them to slavery. The black men who now assist Union prisoners to escape, they are to be converted into our enemies in the vain hope of gaining the good will of their masters. We shall have to fight two nations instead of one. You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate success ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only in the Liberty Loan drive, but in the Red Cross and War Savings Stamp drives, the Negro is doing his part. There are Negro agents all over the South who are educating our people up to what the Government at Washington wants. Such schools as Snow Hill, Laurinburg, Denmark, Utica, Okalona and Calhoun and many others are serving as bureaus of information for this war work among the Negroes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Enlistment was at a stand-still, and as the British were threatening with annihilation the few troops then in the field, it became evident that the States would have to look to their own defence. New York again turned her attention to her free negro population; a bill was prepared and introduced in the legislature looking to the arming of her negroes, and in October, a month after Gen. Jackson issued his appeal to the negroes of Louisiana, the Legislature passed a bill of which the following are the most important sections:
"An Act to authorize the raising of Two Regiments of Men of Color ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The law of 1790 providing that no one could become a citizen of the United States except free Whites was the law until the aftermath of the Civil War added the word "black" or "of African descent" to those who could be naturalized. This last provision should be repealed and the blacks with the South American and Central American Indians put on the same footing as the Orientals. ”