The Negro's Agricultural Opportunity 55 



cerned, two facts indicate that if competition affects him 

 materially it will be at a distantly future date. One is 

 that great masses of Negro agricultural laborers, concen- 

 trated in Black Belt counties, have tended to make white 

 labor seek other fields of employment. Only recently have 

 white men begun to compete with the Negroes in this area. 

 The second is that, while the Negroes in the cities have 

 been driven downward from owners of small businesses 

 into the ranks of employed help, the Negroes in the country 

 districts, starting at the lowest rung in the ladder, that of 

 laborer, have tended to climb into the ranks of tenant and 

 owner. In fact it seems more likely that the disadvantages 

 of his lot in the Black Belt will drive the Negro away from 

 his farm opportunity before white competition exerts much 

 pressure. If, in the face of increasing competition, there is 

 to be a platform upon which the races can work together 

 in the future as in the past, it will arise from the mutual 

 interests of white and colored people. Since the South is 

 so predominantly rural, it is probable that the majority of 

 these interests will be found in the institutions of rural life 

 and land tenure. 



In the meantime there is a growing group of colored 

 people which will help work out these mutual interests. It 

 consists of the land-holders, home-owners and tenants who 

 become more or less attached to the land. The 

 foregoing chapter indicates fully that the Negroes in Geor- 

 gia can no longer be divided from white people by a sharp 

 line of economic cleavage. In contrast with the conditions 

 before the Civil War, whe n all Negroes were laborers and 

 all white people were land-owners or overseers T t he condi- 

 ti on now is that while the majority of the colo red people are 

 l aborers, some colored people and some white people are 

 tena nts, and som e of both races are land-ow ners. The im- 

 perative econornTc~anT^ooMne^ the counties in which 

 large numbers of Negroes have taken advantage of their 

 opportunities to become owners and tenants is that they be 



