In all, one hundred and eighty-five Negroes have owned land
in this county since 1875.
If all the black land-owners who had ever held land here
had kept it or left it in the hands of black men, the Negroes
would have owned nearer thirty thousand acres than the
fifteen thousand they now hold. And yet these fifteen thou-
sand acres are a creditable showing,--a proof of no little
weight of the worth and ability of the Negro people. If they
had been given an economic start at Emancipation, if they
had been in an enlightened and rich community which really
desired their best good, then we might perhaps call such a
result small or even insignificant. But for a few thousand
poor ignorant field-hands, in the face of poverty, a falling
market, and social stress, to save and capitalize two hundred
thousand dollars in a generation has meant a tremendous
effort. The rise of a nation, the pressing forward of a social
class, means a bitter struggle, a hard and soul-sickening battle
with the world such as few of the more favored classes know
or appreciate.
Out of the hard economic conditions of this portion of the
Black Belt, only six per cent of the population have suc-
ceeded in emerging into peasant proprietorship; and these are
not all firmly fixed, but grow and shrink in number with the
wavering of the cotton-market.
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