The Colorado statesman., 1913-08-01

The real black belt of the United
States is not in Mississippi nor South
Carolina, but in the great farming
districts of Delaware and the eastern
shore Of Maryland. writer in the
New York Sun asserts. There are
not so many colored people in this
region, but they are a good deal near
er pure black. Yellow folk never were
numerous, but they are getting fewer,
and there is a distinct reversion to-
ward the pure African type This Is
attributed to an enforcement of caste
lines even more rigid than in slavery
days. A single drop of African blood
condemns its owner to classification
with the colored people. Such per
sons of mixed blood as remain in the,
rural parts of the border states find
that they are not socially advanced by
their Caucasian inheritance, and they
often marry with the blackest of their
neighbors. Such marriages are has
tening the reversion to type.
A skilled enthnologist could assign
many of these people to their proper
African tribes. Yet, with this rever-
sion to African type is going on an
other thing that marks progress with
in type limits. Many of the very
blackest men and women show a
touch of refinement in features and
expression, and the gentleness and in
telligence evident in many men is far
removed from the type Of savage ma
tive African.
The colored folk, whatever their de-
gree of blackness, are isolated in
dustrially and socially. On the farms,
where they are almost the only hired
laborers. they have their tiny cabins,
usually set by the roadside, because
they prefer the cheerfulness of the
highway to the privacy of the fields.
Each farm has it's masters house set
from one hundred to five hundred
yards from the highway behind a
dense screen of trees and shrubbery.
In town, as in country, the colored
people are segregated from the
whites.
Native whites incline to deny that
the negro is advancing, but any one
who revisits this black belt after an
absence of 25 or 80 years can easily
measure roughly for himself the ad-
vance. Comparatively few Negroes
over ten and under sixty are un-
able to read and write, and the vii
lage homes, though poor and unsani-
tary, are better than they were some
| thirty years ago.
Negro farm laborers hire for nine
months for 500 to s25 month with
keep, which usually means lodging
/ ~ 80 htf uhn nj los q
food. In the best farming regions
many of the Negroes, some estimate
two or three out of five own horse
and carriage, and on Sundays the
roads leading to picnic places or
country churches show a procession
of Negroes in their buggies. The far
mer usually agrees to feed the horse
and house the carriage, deducting.
perhaps, 81 or So month for this
favor One laborer, with no horse.
brought along to one of the finest
farms In Delaware two pigs, which
the farmer fattened for him. The
horse is often sold to the Negro by
his employer on the installment plan
and kept for him all winter If he is
not able to pay for it in single sea-
| son. The winter season of enforced
non-employment of most of the men
tends to create irregular habits of in
dustry. Wives and grown daughters
are usually able to find work in white
| families for the winter, but many of
| them stubbornly decline to remain
employed in the summer because their
husband or brothers are then earning
good wages.