62 Negro Migration 



in extent, however, do the holdings approximate those of the 

 whites. These Negro holdings were made possible by the 

 fact that the counties were, in 1860, just beginning to become 

 plantation counties. The planters were pushing southward in 

 search of new lands to replace the worn out lands of the 

 Black Belt. Large tracts were available for their purposes 

 in Southwest Georgia, and they moved in with their slaves, 

 extending the old Black Belt area into this section. Upon 

 emancipation, the Negroes found it possible to acquire tracts 

 of uncleared land in the neighborhood of their old planta- 

 tions. In recent years this movement of land-owners has 

 extended westward from the coast and eastward and south- 

 ward from the Black Belt into the Wiregrass section. In 

 this latter section, in 1900, there were 7,322 farms operated 

 by Negroes, of which 2,390 or 32.6 per cent were operated 

 by owners. By 1910 the number of farms operated by 

 Negroes increased to 16,643, of which 3,578 or 21.5 per 

 cent were operated by owners. This is an increase of about 

 one-half in the number of Negro farm owners for the 

 decade of 1900-1910. 5 



There are a number of Negro owned farms in the Black 

 Belt, outside of the coastal region, but in proportion to the 

 Negro population in this, area the number is small. Here 

 the larger part of the farms are operated by Ne- 

 groes, but only 5,404 of the 58,776 Negro farms in this 

 area in 1900 were operated by owners and the remainder 

 were operated by tenants. That is to say only 9.2 per cent 

 of Negroes in the Black Belt (including the southwest 

 corner) who were operating farms owned them. This num- 

 ber increased from 5,404 in 1900 to 7,648 in 1910. Since 

 the tenant classes were increasing more rapidly, the percen- 

 tage of farms in the Black Belt operated by owners fell 

 from 9.2 to 9.13. The numerical increase of from 5,404 

 to 7,648 indicates that Negroes are also beginning, to some 

 extent, to acquire land in the Black Belt. 



5 Compiled from census of 1910. 



