Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, General Research and Reference Division. Reproduced with permission from the Board of Directors, The Good Life Center.

Scott Nearing, Black America (New York: The Vanguard Press, 1929)

By the turn of the twentieth century, cotton cultivation was in regression all over the South, but it was still the major crop. When the boll weevil spread throughout the region, the overreliance on cotton proved to be a disaster, especially for the sharecroppers and tenant farmers who lost their jobs, and with them, their housing.