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"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson

  • Writer's pictureTracy's Thoughts

Who Should Be Held Responsible?

Updated: Jan 27, 2019

An Editorial in The Anniston Star caught my attention recently in which they almost gushingly gave thanks to Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the 14th District of New York for her verbal flub when she said "ringworm" instead of "hookworm". In one part it reads, "Of all the issues that confront our state’s medical communities and public-health advocates, the appalling rates of hookworm down in the Black Belt’s Lowndes County likely tops that dreadful list." and further says, "Republicans slamming Ocasio-Cortez for that verbal mistake aren’t interested in what’s important. They just want to score partisan points in today’s hypersensitive political environment." It also mentions where Democratic Congresswoman Terri Sewell of the 7th District of Alabama helped arrange for a spending increase for wastewater infrastructure last spring through the U.S. Department of Agriculture for millions of working families across rural America. It concludes with this, "This public-health calamity exists because Lowndes County is majority black, politically weak, overwhelmingly poor and far from the radar of the Montgomery politicians who could make a difference. That the state Department of Public Health has disputed the Baylor research and its small sample size is almost as appalling as the outbreak itself. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t represent one of Alabama’s congressional districts. But she has done us a favor. Maybe people will now listen."


Alabama's "Black Belt" region traditionally includes the following counties, Barbour, Bullock, Butler, Choctaw, Crenshaw, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Lowndes, Macon, Marengo, Montgomery, Perry, Pickens, Pike, Russell, Sumter, and Wilcox. Clarke, Conecuh, Escambia, Monroe, and Washington counties are sometimes included, but are usually considered part of Alabama's southern coastal plain. While Lamar county does not meet the soil traits it is often included due to it's rural character.


As of the 22nd of the United States Census in 2000 this area had a population of 589,041, 13.25% of Alabama's total population. There were 226,191 households and 153,357 families residing within the region. The racial makeup here was 52.24% African American, 307,734 people, 45.87% White, 270,175 people, 0.25% Native American, 1,472 people, 0.52% Asian, 3,067 people, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 153 people, 0.31% from other races, 1,850 people, and 0.78% from two or more races, 4,590 people. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 1.09% of the population, 6,404 people. The area's median income for a household was $27,130, and the median income for a family was $35,698. Males had a median income of $32,226 versus $22,021 for females. The per capita income for the region was $15,633.


The term "Black Belt" according to the Alabama Black Belt Heritage Area website is described as, "Alabama's Black Belt area is part of a larger, national Black Belt region that stretches from Texas to Virginia. This region has historically been home to "the richest soil and the poorest people" in the United States, as noted by Arthur Raper in his 1936 study Preface to Peasantry.


From DeSoto's meeting with Tuscaloosa to the birth of the Confederacy and the civil rights struggles of the mid-twentieth century, some of the nation's most significant historical events occurred in the region. Originally, the term "Black Belt" referred to the exceptionally fertile black soil that encouraged early pioneers in the 1820s and 1830s to settle Alabama and construct a network of cotton plantations that held half of Alabama's enslaved population. During this time, the Black Belt was one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful regions in the United States. Its commerce elevated Montgomery, Selma, and Demopolis into some of the most affluent towns in the nation.


When the Civil War began in 1861, Montgomery was chosen as the first capital of the Confederacy. In recent decades, the region has been known for the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1950s and 1960s, long-oppressed African Americans in Alabama's Black Belt enacted some of the most crucial events of the modern American freedom struggle."


But before I get too far into this article Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also recently stated that the United States should pay reparations to the non-white communities who were negatively impacted by America’s "New Deal" which was a series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt.


"The classic cautionary account of unchecked cultural change in the rural South and endorsement of New Deal social reforms." is mentioned by Louis Mazzari in the New Introduction of the book "Preface to Peasantry: A Tale of Two Black Belt Counties" by Arthur Raper. That further states, "A social scientist and public intellectual, Arthur Raper (1899–1979) advocated unpopular solutions to combat the shortcomings of race relations and economic stagnation in the South. Originally published in 1936, Preface to Peasantry confirmed Raper's place in the Chapel Hill Southern Regionalist movement of the 1930s and 1940s and elaborated his belief that New Deal federal planning could create progressive social policies.


The result of a seven-year investigation into social and economic stress in Georgia marked by African American emigration from the rural South to northern and New South cities, Raper's work focuses on the agricultural depression of Greene County, Georgia, bereft of farmable soil and with a rapidly declining black population, and the contrasting economic stability of Macon County, Georgia, where the land remained fertile and the population had not suffered significant upheaval. Arguing that the plantation system had taught African Americans only dependence and irresponsibility, Raper warned that, without social programs that materially altered the South's racial and economic policies, the course of events in Greene County and similar communities would drive African American tenant farmers and sharecroppers into a permanently subjugated peasant class."


Further reading on the term "Black Belt" lead me to an August 2017 article from AL(dot)com, "What is the Black Belt and why is it called that?" written by Christopher Harress that was a follow up to an email with Grover Kitchens, a political science professor at Snead State Community college in Boaz, Alabama, that said his students often believed the term originated due to the current large population of African-Americans living in that region. The article states, "While Kitchens' students are technically wrong, the term has since evolved to take on politically charged meaning, deeply rooted in the civil rights era and the African-American people that have continuously resided in the region since the early 1800s." This article also says, "The older meaning of term, dating back to 1820s and 30s, was really about the rich dark soil where people planted cotton and built plantations on, and of course, with that came African-American slavery," said Allen Tullos, a professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta, and author of Alabama Getaway: The Political Imaginary and the Heart of Dixie. "So pretty early on those meanings got combined." Near the end of this article it reads, "The boll weevil invasion, the collapse of cotton tenancy, the failure to diversify economically, the urban exodus, and the repressive era of Jim Crow all combined to mire the southern Black Belt in a seemingly irreversible decline," wrote Tallos. "What had been one of America's richest and most politically powerful regions became one of its poorest."


Out of personal curiosity I did a quick search of the 7th Census of the United States in 1850 and found the following statistics for several of those Alabama counties that are included in the "Black Belt" region. These figures show that statewide there were 426,514 Whites, 2,265 Free Colored and 342, 844 Slaves counted then.


Barbour - Whites: 12,842 Free Colored: 10 Slaves: 2,218

Butler - Whites: 7,162 Free Colored: 35 Slaves: 3,639

Choctaw - Whites: 4,620 Free Colored: 0 Slaves: 3,769

Dallas - Whites: 7,461 Free Colored: 8 Slaves: 22,258

Greene - Whites: 9,265 Free Colored: 49 Slaves: 22,127

Lowndes - Whites: 7,258 Free Colored: 8 Slaves: 14,649

Macon - Whites: 11, 286 Free Colored: 16 Slaves: 15,596

Marengo - Whites: 7,101 Free Colored: 37 Slaves: 20,693

Montgomery - Whites: 10,169 Free Colored: 115 Slaves: 19,427

Perry - Whites: 8,342 Free Colored: 26 Slaves: 13,917

Pike - Whites: 12,102 Free Colored: 21 Slaves: 3,794

Russell - Whites: 8,405 Free Colored: 32 Slaves: 11,111

Sumter - Whites: 7369 Free Colored: 50 Slaves: 14,831

Wilcox - Whites: 5,517 Free Colored: 0 Slaves: 11,835


In the early 1970's I lived in Selma located in Dallas County. The Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma, was the site of the "Bloody Sunday" conflict on March 7, 1965, when armed police attacked and brutally beat Civil Rights Movement demonstrators with billy clubs and tear gas as they were attempting to march to the state capital in Montgomery. The marchers crossed the bridge again on March 21 and successfully walked to the Capitol building. This activism generated national attention to social justice and that summer, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress to authorize federal oversight and enforcement of constitutional rights of all citizens. At the time I was living there, as a kid, I never fully understood or appreciated what that bridge represented as I had crossed it in a vehicle when my Father had taken the family around town showing us some history.


Upon more reading about the 7th Census of the United States in 1850 I looked at the numbers from some of the counties throughout Alabama such as the one I currently live in, others that I have lived in and the one, according to a few books on my family history, where my ancestors had first lived in.


First I'll start with Calhoun County where I am currently, it was then known as Benton County.


Benton - Whites: 13,397 Free Colored: 29 Slaves: 936


I have been in Anniston located in Calhoun County since 2002. Anniston was the center of national controversy when on Mother's Day, Sunday, May 14, 1961 a mob firebombed a bus filled with civilian Freedom Riders. As the bus burned, the mob held the doors shut, intent on burning the riders to death. An exploding fuel tank caused the mob to retreat, allowing the riders to escape the bus. The riders were viciously beaten as they tried to flee, where warning shots fired into the air by highway patrolmen prevented the riders from being lynched on the spot. In a previous Blog article I wrote, "Anniston, From A Private Town To A Public Town: The "Model City" Has Been Broken (Part 3)", it starts out with this, "In historical writings on the creation of both the physical and intellectual New South, one aspect that has been largely overlooked is the existence of a town that was founded to be a "model city" and that became in time a model for the New South credo, the town of Anniston." - Preface of the book "The Model City of the New South: Anniston, Alabama, 1872-1900" Today in 2019 there are still racial issues that plague this city.


Next I'll visit Coffee County the place of my birth in the city of Enterprise, famous for the only monument in the world to an agricultural pest, the Boll Weevil Monument.


Coffee - Whites: 5,380 Free Colored: 3 Slaves 557


I was born in 1963, on August 28th, the very day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now famous "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington D.C. I grew up hearing and seeing some of the racial injustice taking place back then. I heard, laughed at and retold some jokes back then that were very racial in nature. But when I joined the US Air Force in 1982 and started my Basic Military Training I remember being told that the color of one's skin will not matter for it may be the one beside you that would save your life if ever in a time of battle, or you saving their life. This same lesson was taught to me again when I was training to become a Police Officer in the state of Alabama. This is something that I have never forgotten!


Now on to some other Counties I have lived in.


Chambers - Whites: 12,784 Free Colored: 18 Slaves: 11,158

Dale - Whites: 5,622 Free Colored: 3 Slaves: 757

Marshall - Whites: 7,952 Free Colored: 26 Slaves: 868

Talladega - Whites: 11,617 Free Colored: 36 Slaves: 6,971

Last let us visit Randolph County where my ancestors had first lived according to those few books on my family history.


Randolph: Whites: 10,616 Free Colored: 29 Slaves: 936


Upon additional reading in those books on my family history it shows that in the 1630's my ancestors arrived in what would one day become known as the United States of America. In addition to that is also shows that Airard FitzStephen (born about 1036, died after 1066), a Norman Knight, was said to have accompanied William the Conqueror into England in 1066. Robert FitzStephen (born about 1136, died 1183), a Cambro-Norman Soldier, was said to be one of the leaders of the Norman invasion of Ireland, for which he was granted extensive lands in Ireland. Solomon Stephens (born 1775, died ????), a Farmer, was said to have owned a total of fifteen slaves according to the 1850 Randolph County Alabama Slave Census. Josiah Fishback Nelson "Joe" Stephens (born 1818, died 1884), a Miller, Merchant and Farmer, was said to have owned a total of one slave according to the 1850 Randolph County Alabama Slave Census. Joseph Samuel Stephens (born 1846, died 1908), a Confederate States of America Soldier, was said to have entered the Civil War as a young man of sixteen in the spring of 1862. It was during a scouting mission when he and his companions were captured by Yankee Cavalrymen. When the Yankees took their swords and requested their Confederate Caps, as was customary at the time, it was told that Joseph replied, "You damn Yankee, if you think you can take my cap, try it, and someone will get his butt whipped". One of the Yankees responded with, "I like your spunk, you may keep your cap" and he wore it home after the war.


So as descendants of Conquerors, Invaders, Slave Owners and Soldiers of a "Lost Cause" should I or my two sons be held responsible for the actions of my ancestors? According to some, it is always the fault of the White Man.


And as the electoral maps of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with the exception of parts of the city of Birmingham, the outline of Alabama's 7th Congressional District roughly matches the western "Black Belt" region and has appeared as a "Blue Belt" because of the voters' strong support for the Democratic Party. So who should be held responsible here then? According to some, it is always the fault of the Republicans.


Every day I see where some people are obsessed with hate, just take a look around and you'll see it too. Have I ever hated? Yes. Did my hate solve anything? No. Did I get over my hate? Yes. I am reminded of a time of my childhood when my family life was being torn apart. The divorce of one's parents can be devastating. Sometimes mean and ugly things are said by one of the parents about the other parent. Depending on the age of the children involved, they can be easily influenced by one parent to be angry at and hate the other parent. That happened to me and I once uttered the words that I hated my Father. My Grandmother told me that I could not hate anyone if I had the love of God in my heart. I have never forgot those words she said to me so many years ago. Do I dislike some people and the things they represent? Yes. Do I hate them? No.


"Not all insecure people are haters, but all haters are insecure people." - John R. "Jack" Schafer, Ph.D.

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