The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1916, Page 34

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A Great Opportunity.

If you will examine the accompanying sketch,
a map of the so-called “Black Belt,” you will see
its great extent and its immense Negro population.
And this examination should induce you to take
the time to consider your obligation and your re-
sponsibility for this great field.

The shaded part of the map represents the real
“Black Belt,” namely, that part of the great South-
land having an average Colored population of fifty
per cent. and over. Some of the counties. in this
large area have a Negro population of over ninety
per cent., and in Issaquena County, Mississippi, for

The “Black Belt’’.

exainple, of every hundred inhabitants ninety-four
are Colored, and only six are white. In Arkansas,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia,
South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, the
nine States generally regarded as comprising the
“Black Belt,” the total Colored population is over
seven million. In other words, three-fourths of
the Colored people of the United States live in these
nine States.

Among’ its sixty-seven counties Alabama has
twenty-one in which the Colored population exceeds
fifty per cent. of the whole, and in no less than
eleven of these counties the Colored population is
more than three times greater than the white. Ar-
kansas has fourteen counties in which the Colored
exceeds the white population, and in many others
of its Seventy-four counties there is a strong Colored

34 The Lutheran Pioneer.

population. Jlorida has forty-seven counties; in
ten of these the Negroes are in the majority, and .
in several the majority is quite large. Of the hun-
dred and forty-six counties in Georgia no less than
sixty-seven are well within the “Black Belt,” and
in twenty-eight counties the ratio of population
is two or more Colored to one white. In twenty-
five of the sixty parishes (counties) of Louisiana
the Colored population is in excess of the white. In
five of these parishes the Negroes outnumber thie
whites more than four to one, and in 'Tensas Parish
the ratio is nine to one! A/ississippi of all the
States in the Union has the largest proportionate
Colored population, over fifty-six of every hundred
of its inhabitants being Negroes. In eighteen coun-
ties of this State the population is more than three-
fourths Colored, and in eleven counties there are
five Negroes to one white person. North Carolina
has fourteen counties in the “Black Belt,” and the
number of counties having strong Negro popula-
tions is quite large. Next to Mississippi, South
Carolina has the greatest proportion of Colored
people within its borders; of every hundred people
in this State fifty-five are Colored. Of its forty-
three counties no less than thirty-three have a Negro
population of more than fifty per cent. In Vir-
ginia the proportion of Negroes is about the same
as in North Carolina. It has twenty-nine counties
in a-total of a hundred and nine in which the
Colored population exceeds the white. In the great
State of Z'exas, with its two hundred and seventeen
counties, the whites outnumber the Colored about
four to one, but in nine counties the Negroes out-
number the whites. Z'ennessce has only two coun- ~
ties, and Maryland only one, in which the Colored
people are in the majority. —

For most of the one and a half million Colored
children, of from six to fourteén years of age, liv-
ing in the “Black Belt” the educational opportu-
nities are deplorable. In many parts the school-
term for the whole year is only of three or four
months’ duration. Besides, the schools are often so
widely scattered that they are practically out of the
reach of many that ought to attend. In Louisiana
only one child out of three attends school; in Ala- ©
bama about half of the children of the ages of six
to fourteen attend. ‘The census reports show that,
where schools are provided for, the, Negroes take
advantage of the opportunity offered them and send
their children, for in the North and West the pro-

portion attending school among persons of from
six to eighteen years of age is not much less among