Rural Blacks : A Vanishing Population / Lewis W. Jones and Everett S. Lee.

The rural Negro population has been of public concern since the slave status was defined and an ideological defense of that status began to take shape. When slavery ended, a definition of the Negro status in custom and in law was undertaken wherever Negro people were concentrated. Controls were devised to "keep the Negro in his place." That place for decades was to be in the rural South and largely in the agricultural enterprises until the impact of World War I was felt in the United states. In order to place a discussion of the rural Negro at a conference identified with W.E.B. DuBois several references are mentioned and discussed. By 1970, 80 percent of the black population is in urban places and nearly 74 percent are in metropolitan areas. No more than half (53 percent) of the black population is southern, and in no state is the black population much more than a third. The black farmers who remain are highly concentrated, specialize in cash crops, and operate small units with little monetary return. Current trends do not encourage hopes for a resurgence of blacks in agriculture in the South. Despite what appears to be a high rate of reproduction the black farm population is diminishing. There is a high rate of out-migration from rural populations, and the number of children is diminishing relative to the total population. A high proportion of the black children in rural farm areas are those of people who are dead, who are living elsewhere, or who are members of subfamilies whose heads are not household heads. (Author/AM)

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