Black Belt

The Black Belt is a narrow region in the southern United States from the Chesapeake Bay to the lower Mississippi River. The name both refers to the dark, fertile soil, and the population of African-Americans who were brought to plantations for slavery, and whose descendants remain a significant part of the region's population.

Understand
The Black Belt follows a theme of geographic "belts" across North America, including the northeastern Rust Belt and the southwestern Sun Belt. Much of the South is part of the "Bible Belt", known for its many Evangelical Protestant congregations.

The Black Belt is located along the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line, between the Piedmont plateau and the Atlantic coastal plain. The chalk-rich soil of the Black Belt is prime land for commodity crops such as cotton and tobacco.

As the Seaboard Fall Line forms the head of navigation for many rivers, many major cities of the South are lined up in the Black belt.

Through the Atlantic slave trade, captives from West Africa arrived in Atlantic ports, most of them purchased by plantation owners. With expansion of plantations, indigenous Americans were relocated by force along the trail of Tears. See early history of the United States for this period. Outside the Black Belt, many plantations were founded along the Mississippi River and along the Atlantic coast.

Slavery ended with the American Civil War, but institutional racism remained in the south. With the Great Migration of the 20th century, millions of African-Americans left the Southern plantation region for cities across the United States; see industrialization of the United States.

The Black Belt was the center of attention for the Civil Rights movement; see postwar United States. The postwar years also saw concentration of African Americans and other ethnic minorities to urban neighborhoods, while suburbs and the countryside were mostly settled by white people. The South, in particular its countryside, is traditionally conservative, and since the 1960s a stronghold of the Republican Party. The counties along the Seaboard Fall Line are more urban and have a relatively large young and black population, and consistently vote for the Democrats.

Get around
The Underground Railroad and From Plymouth to Hampton Roads are routes in the northeastern United States which give a historical background to antebellum history.

From St. Augustine to Hampton Roads describes colonial and antebellum destinations along the Atlantic coast.

Virginia

 * , Roanoke &mdash; Preserves portions of a former tobacco plantation where Booker T. Washington, noted African-American political leader, was born into slavery.
 * , Roanoke &mdash; Preserves portions of a former tobacco plantation where Booker T. Washington, noted African-American political leader, was born into slavery.
 * , Roanoke &mdash; Preserves portions of a former tobacco plantation where Booker T. Washington, noted African-American political leader, was born into slavery.
 * , Roanoke &mdash; Preserves portions of a former tobacco plantation where Booker T. Washington, noted African-American political leader, was born into slavery.
 * , Roanoke &mdash; Preserves portions of a former tobacco plantation where Booker T. Washington, noted African-American political leader, was born into slavery.
 * , Roanoke &mdash; Preserves portions of a former tobacco plantation where Booker T. Washington, noted African-American political leader, was born into slavery.

North Carolina

 * Raleigh, North Carolina
 * Charlotte, North Carolina
 * , Greensboro &mdash; Site of a battle in the American Revolution that contributed to ultimate British surrender at the end of the war.

South Carolina

 * Greenville, South Carolina
 * , Ninety Six &mdash; Site of a colonial-era village that was the location of a battle during the American Revolution.
 * , Camden &mdash; Preserves a set of colonial-era sites with artifacts from the American Revolution.

Alabama



 * , Tuskegee &mdash; Training grounds for the Tuskegee Airmen, an all African-American flight squadron during World War II.



Mississippi

 * Starkville, Mississippi, the state university campus.
 * , Tupelo &mdash; Site of a Civil War battle where Confederate forces tried to cut Union supply lines.
 * , Vicksburg &mdash; Site of a major Civil War battle that was the culmination of the Union's Vicksburg Campaign, which gave the Union control over the Mississippi River.
 * , Tupelo &mdash; Site of a Civil War battle where Confederate forces tried to cut Union supply lines.
 * , Vicksburg &mdash; Site of a major Civil War battle that was the culmination of the Union's Vicksburg Campaign, which gave the Union control over the Mississippi River.

Go next

 * American Industry Tour and Old West for destinations of the Great Migration