Black Belt in the American South
Black Belt in the American South refers to the social history, especially concerning slavery and black workers, of the geological region known as the Black Belt. The geology emphasizes the highly fertile black soil. Historically, the black belt economy was based on cotton plantations – along with some tobacco plantation areas along the Virginia-North Carolina border. The valuable land was largely controlled by rich whites, and worked by very poor, primarily black slaves who in many counties constituted a majority of the population. Generally the term is applied to a larger region than that defined by its geology.

After 1945, a large fraction of the laborers were replaced by machinery, and they joined the Great Migration to cities of the Midwest and West. Political analysts and historians continue to use the term Black Belt to designate some 200 counties in the South from Virginia to Texas that have a history of majority African-American population and cotton production.
Q908604
social history
Concept
Q85850272
Black Belt
LOC
Q5659877
Great Migration
UNK
Q1370
Virginia
LOC
Q1439
Texas
LOC
Q880087
Black Belt in the American South
LOC
1945-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1945
DATE
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