REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 19 



farms are run by the plantation system. The average 

 cotton acre has produced 190 pounds, and the whole 

 area produces on the average over a million bales. 25 



Just above is the bow-shaped region of clay hills, a 

 continuation of the red hills of western Georgia through 

 Alabama and Mississippi. The area is rather small, has 

 hilly clay land with some "white rock" land, and produces 

 about 320,000 bales on 8,000 acres of upland cotton. 



A well-known subregion is the "Alabama Black Belt," 

 so called from both its Negro workers and the crescent- 

 shaped Black Prairies which curve upward from south- 

 eastern Alabama into northern Mississippi. The "black 

 lands," moisty brown silt loams with post oak vegeta- 

 tion, grow a strong staple, 1 inch to 1% inches in length. 

 The humid climate and heavy soil have produced a type 

 of cotton much sought after. Over one-half of the im- 

 proved land area is in cotton, and 78 per cent of the 

 farms are operated by Negro tenants, 64 per cent of the 

 cultivated land being in plantations. The average hold- 

 ing is above thirty-five acres. The average "yield per acre 

 is less than 150 pounds owing to continuous cropping 

 and shallow plowing" mainly by unskilled Negro labor. 28 



A fairly productive small cotton area is the fertile 

 Tennessee River Valley regions of northern Alabama with 

 its brown and red hill soils. The Mississippi Bluffs extend 

 from Louisiana into Kentucky. The Silt Loam Uplands 

 are level and undulating and have suffered erosion, with 

 the vegetation principally oak, sweet gum, and poplar. 

 The cotton acre produces about two hundred pounds and 

 the area produces about a half-million bales. The Gulf 



25 Cotton Atlas, pp. 8, 12. 

 28 Ibid., p. 8. 



