1860 Cotton Production and the 2008 Vote

[Enigma]

Ha. Interesting....

This is the south’s 2008 presidential vote (in red and blue) overlaid by an 1860 map of cotton production (dots).
http://www.themonkeycage.org/votes1.jpg

[SteamWake]

Huh I dident know they grew cotton in Texas :p

Theres somethin screwy with that map. Im assuming it was done by electoral votes vs popular votes.

[August]

Huh I dident know they grew cotton in Texas :p

Theres somethin screwy with that map. Im assuming it was done by electoral votes vs popular votes.

Well Texas isn't on that particular map but yeah there is something screwy about it.

Link please Enigma...

[subchaser12]

Huh I dident know they grew cotton in Texas :p

Theres somethin screwy with that map. Im assuming it was done by electoral votes vs popular votes.

Well Texas isn't on that particular map but yeah there is something screwy about it.

Link please Enigma...

Yeah I was like Texas, where hell is it. Oh, it's not here. :up:

[breadcatcher101]

It appears the nut doesn't fall too far from the tree after all.

Most of the cotton in Alabama at that time was grown in the black belt, named for the color of the soil, not the people.

[Etienne]

Am I being too PC, or there's a pretty racist connotation here?

[A Very Super Market]

It wouldn't be racist to be logical.

Black people are more inclined to vote Obama, as with most minorities.

1860 cotton fields had high populations of black people.

[subchaser12]

Am I being too PC, or there's a pretty racist connotation here?

Ya think?

[PeriscopeDepth]

1860 cotton fields had high populations of black people.
Oh really? I can't imagine why that is.

PD

[caspofungin]

1860 cotton fields had high populations of black people

and apparently they're still there, 140 years later.

[subchaser12]

and apparently they're still there, 140 years later.

Well the republicans have 8 years to court the black vote. Good luck with that haha :up:

[caspofungin]

and apparently they're still there, 140 years later.
i didn't mean in still in the cotton fields...:roll:

i just find it surprising that a map of 1860 black population density is still valid in 2008 -- don't people move? or die?

[Enigma]

I knew someone would suggest racist undertones, and I guess thats unavoidable, but I'll point out that I simply found it interesting, based on the map alone. So there. :lol:

Here you go August....
http://chrisblattman.blogspot.com/2008/12/path-dependence-at-work.html

[breadcatcher101]

Yeah, the old race card gets pulled if you look at someone sideways these days. It gets kinda old really.

Most of the blacks are in the same general areas although I remember a massive move by many back in the '60's to the north, mostly IL (Chicago area I suppose). Never did know why exactly, lots of times it was whole familys, cousins and all. Probably jobs there maybe?

[A Very Super Market]

Bleh, now I look like a racist.

Well if one hundred people lived in a single area in 1860, it could be reasonable to assume that a good majority of them still live in the same area

[breadcatcher101]

No you don't.

[caspofungin]

Most of the blacks are in the same general areas although I remember a massive move by many back in the '60's to the north, mostly IL (Chicago area I suppose). Never did know why exactly, lots of times it was whole familys, cousins and all. Probably jobs there maybe?

that's what i was getting at -- like i said, i'm surprised that a population map from 1860 would be remotely close to similar to the 2008 version.

Yeah, the old race card gets pulled if you look at someone sideways these days.

well, it gets pulled even more frequently when you're in a minority.

[August]

I knew someone would suggest racist undertones, and I guess thats unavoidable, but I'll point out that I simply found it interesting, based on the map alone. So there. :lol:

Here you go August....
http://chrisblattman.blogspot.com/2008/12/path-dependence-at-work.html

I hope that racist undertones comment isn't directed at me...

FWIW found this on the original site:

UPDATE #3: In comment #96, C. Neal explains how the voting pattern can be related to even more antique antecedents than Antebellum agriculture - the Late Cretaceous Period, no less. Go to the comment for link to the post…

[subchaser12]

Most of the blacks are in the same general areas although I remember a massive move by many back in the '60's to the north, mostly IL (Chicago area I suppose). Never did know why exactly, lots of times it was whole familys, cousins and all. Probably jobs there maybe?

Hmmm, why would a black family want to leave the south and move up north in the 1960's, think hard. :rotfl:

[August]

Most of the blacks are in the same general areas although I remember a massive move by many back in the '60's to the north, mostly IL (Chicago area I suppose). Never did know why exactly, lots of times it was whole familys, cousins and all. Probably jobs there maybe?
Hmmm, why would a black family want to leave the south and move up north in the 1960's, think hard. :rotfl:

Because according to the map the old plantation areas are already filled up? :lol:

[breadcatcher101]

Most of the blacks are in the same general areas although I remember a massive move by many back in the '60's to the north, mostly IL (Chicago area I suppose). Never did know why exactly, lots of times it was whole familys, cousins and all. Probably jobs there maybe?

Hmmm, why would a black family want to leave the south and move up north in the 1960's, think hard. :rotfl:

Well, you know how we southern boys are with all our sheets and cross-burnings. I saw none of that in my neck of the woods back then. You show your lack of knowledge worse than I do and that is saying a lot.

I think a valid reason would have been a lot of cotton farmers started buying combines and no longer needed blacks to pick cotton. I think that was about the time the projects started going up in Chicago as well. How many are still living there after 50 years?

[A Very Super Market]

Nothing against most southerners, but the 60's were only 5 years after desegregation.

[breadcatcher101]

Granted, some may have moved due to the actions of a very few, but from what I saw it was because lack of jobs. Vietnam was yet to come and there was a recession at that time. I remember the blacks in the cotton fields like it was yesterday. Has anyone here actually picked cotton before? Let me tell you, it was back-breaking. You drug a long sack all day through mud a lot of the time, the cotton boll would rip your fingers to shreads if you didn't tape them. From sun up to sun down all day. Next day, same thing all over.

The combines did away with all that but they leave so much in the fields that is just wasted. When we picked by hand there was nothing left when we got through. Now the deer come out afterwards to eat the cotton the combines miss for the seeds inside. Ever try to spot a whitetail in a cotton patch? Talk about effective camo.

[subchaser12]

Well, you know how we southern boys are with all our sheets and cross-burnings. I saw none of that in my neck of the woods back then. You show your lack of knowledge worse than I do and that is saying a lot.



Don't get defensive. I'm from the south too and I wouldn't know a Klan member if they ran over me. Same here about the lynching and rallys, that didn't happen in my part of the woods that I know of. I am not saying everyone in the south is in the Klan. Ok now having said that southern treatment of black people hardly needs an introduction here. It's just completely factual to say blacks got the shaft in the south. There is no denying it. There are still "sundown towns" in the south at this writing. Vider Texas for example. A sundown town is a place you don't want to be after dark if you waren't white. Sad this still goes on in 2008, but that's how it is.

Tell me, would you want to live in the south with your family in the 1960's if you were black? I sure as hell wouldn't.

[breadcatcher101]

I like the southeastern USA so I would have lived here if I was green even. I have heard of the town in TX you refer to although I know nothing about the state having never visited it.

I will say though that there are many cities today, most of them up north that I would not like to be in after dark because I am white.

Back to the topic of the post, blacks here in the 60's for the most part had large families. I mean 8 or 10 kids was not uncommon. It simply took a lot of income to support these and at the time here there was not much work to be had. It was nothing to see a complete black family in the cotton field working. If you were too small to pick then you carried water. And too, cotton was seasonal, not a year round source of income. So off to the north in search of something better.

It is interesting to note that one invention, the cotton gin, put hundreds of blacks in the cotton fields and another, the combine, took them out of it.

Many people are surprised that for 100 years after the American Civil War, long after we turned out rifles into ploughs--or your potato gun into didgeridoos if your're an Aussy--blacks remained in the cotton fields. The war's end gave them their freedom but in it's shortcoming provided them with no place to go which is why most are still in cotton producing areas to this day.