All are sprinkled in
little groups over the face of the land, centering about some
dilapidated Big House where the head-tenant or agent lives.
The general character and arrangement of these dwellings
remains on the whole unaltered. There were in the county,
outside the corporate town of Albany, about fifteen hundred
Negro families in 1898. Out of all these, only a single family
occupied a house with seven rooms; only fourteen have five
rooms or more. The mass live in one- and two-room homes.
The size and arrangements of a people's homes are no
unfair index of their condition. If, then, we inquire more
carefully into these Negro homes, we find much that is
unsatisfactory. All over the face of the land is the one-room
cabin,--now standing in the shadow of the Big House, now
staring at the dusty road, now rising dark and sombre amid
the green of the cotton-fields. It is nearly always old and bare,
built of rough boards, and neither plastered nor ceiled. Light
and ventilation are supplied by the single door and by the
square hole in the wall with its wooden shutter. There is no
glass, porch, or ornamentation without.
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