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.
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