Of the Black Belt

Amanda Onalaja

January 11, 2010

AP English – Pd. 3

“Of the Black Belt”, is the seventh chapter of W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk. The Black Belt is the southeastern region of the United States, extending from southwest Tennessee to east-central Mississippi and then east through Alabama to the border with Georgia. Known for its poverty and low education system, the Black Belt is an abundance of the Negro dilemma during the 20^th century. However, the area has negative effects for all races which inhabit it. The early 20th century brought a general economic collapse, among the many causes of which were agriculture depletion, the boll weevil invasion and subsequent collapse of the cotton economy, and the socially repressive Jim Crow laws. What had been one of the nation's wealthiest and most politically powerful regions became one of the poorest.

DuBois’ writing seems more to inform than to persuade. His use of rhetorical examination is clever. By filling chapters with tragic events such as those experienced by the residents of the Black Belt, he allows readers to draw upon their own conclusions, causing emotional turmoil. One can’t help but pity the poor man whose furniture was unlawfully repossessed at the chapters end. Cotton, one of the most old time successful crops no longer shared its abundance of fluffy softness, deepening cotton farmers in debt. DuBois recounts, “you may stand on a spot which is to-day the centre of the Negro problem,—the centre of those nine million men who are America’s dark heritage from slavery and the slave-trade”. True enough Georgia had a large population of African Americans.