BLACK BELT, a part of the southern United States, extend ing from central South Carolina, across central Georgia, through Alabama and Mississippi, so called because it is the area of greatest density of negro popu lation. The Black Belt is slowly moving southward and westward into Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. This is a country of large rice and cotton plantations. More than half of its population is negro. In the country districts living conditions and returns for labour are poor, with a greater tendency toward poverty with its shiftlessness and isolation than is found in the cities. Since 1865 there has been a steady migration from the farms to the towns.
Since 1914 negroes have moved northward and westward in in creasing numbers, largely because of droughts, floods, the attack of the boll weevil on the cotton and because of higher wages and better conditions in the north and west.