Page:The American Negro by Allen, James S..djvu/4

 about 650,000 of these went to southern cities, the remainder to northern cities. Between 1916 and 1928 about 1,200,000 southern Negroes came North, entering, for the most part, the unskilled section of heavy industry. In nine cities today in the United States segregated communi- ties of Negroes comprise the largest Negro settlements in the world. New York City now has 328,000 Negroes; Chicago follows a close second with 234,000; and Philadelphia has 220,000. New Orleans, Baltimore, and Washington each have over 130,000. Before 1920 the bulk of increase had been chiefly in the larger cities, but the last 10 years were marked by a similarly large increase in smaller cities as the Negro workers entered the in- dustrial sections everywhere. The Negro is thus becoming a more and more important factor in the struggles of the workers in practically every important industry. The Negro on the Land The great rural Negro masses of the South are chiefly concen- trated in what is known as the Black Belt. This is an area stretching from eastern Virginia and North Carolina, through South Carolina and the central parts of Georgia and Alabama, into Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and touching the coastal regions of Texas. In this area there are 195 counties in which the Negroes form the majority of the. population. In 20 of these they comprise more than 75% of the population. (See map on page 5.) In four states alone — South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Ala- bama — there are 3,000,000 rural Negroes. It is in these very states that the white ruling class uses the most brutal methods of oppression and persecution. The black peasantry is starving, with land, credit, and means of production in the hands of the white ruling class. The poor white farmer and tenant in the cotton and tobacco areas of the South are utterly poverty stricken. But the Negro is always a rung lower on the economic ladder, more oppressed by landlord, merchant and banker. In southern speech he is only a “Nigger,” 4