68 Negro Migration 



were very few white tenants in this area. The filling up of 

 farms with cash tenants, and the increase in white competi- 

 tion, therefore, has recently limited the opportunity for the 

 Negro to enter cash tenancy in the Black Belt. When the 

 population movement in this section is examined it will 

 appear that this condition is very significant. 



On the other hand, the Upper Piedmont and Wiregrass 

 regions show remarkably active increases in Negro tenantry. 

 Between 1890 and 1910 these areas show a marked increase 

 in farms. New small farms were being taken up in the 

 Upper Piedmont, and some of the large tracts in the Wire- 

 grass, which had been cleared of timber, were opened for 

 farming and subdivided into tenant farms. 



In these two areas all classes of farms have been rapidly 

 increasing. New white and colored farmers are entering 

 these regions, and the colored man moving in finds oppor- 

 tunity as share tenant, cash tenant, or, if he has capital, as 

 owner. 



A summary of the farm opportunity for the Negro indi- 

 cates that he has had the personal friendship of many white 

 people, but the influence of this relation is lessening as 

 slavery recedes into the past; that, in Georgia, some 15,000 

 Neg roes have taken advant a ge of the opportunity to become 

 land-own ing farmers , aasGffloc in7nf)Q_gfjg"> opportunity 

 t o become tenants. That is to sa y, that one in each twenty- 

 five Neg ro males in the country was a l andholder and one 

 i n each four was a ten ant. Furthermore, that since the 

 plantations of the Black Belt have broken down in large 

 numbers, the opportunity in that section is no longer as 

 ample in proportion to the number of Negroes living there 

 as it is in the newer Wiregrass section, or in the Upper 

 Piedmont. 



