Talk:Alabama Black Belt

Tidying up the article
I've rewritten and wikified the introductory paragraph, and removed the context banner. But the rest of the article requires a lot more effort. --Chris Jefferies 16:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Merge, and an observation
As discussion on Talk:Black Belt (region of Alabama) I think this article should be merged into Black Belt (region of Alabama) and/or Black Belt (U.S. region). The first page is mainly about the black belt as it pertains to Alabama in particular, while the second has a larger focus. If anyone feels up to it, all three could be merged into one, I think, with sections pertaining to the various meanings. Too much work for me right now though. But reading this page here, I have a couple observations.

A while ago I did some work to try and expand and improve Black Belt (U.S. region). That page's talk page contains some useful information, but is hard to read due to a very lengthy debate on Kentucky. I noticed on this page there is the claim: "The term Black Belt has also been designated to counties where black people outnumber the white. Over half of the population in the Black Belt is African American. The Black Belt Region also refers to the area of 623 southern counties that have this higher African American percentage." I don't think this is true. There is some info on this on the U.S. region talk page, but buried, so see this section: Talk:Black Belt (U.S. region), especially the last paragraph. According to the US Census 2000, there are 96 US counties with 50% or higher African American population. The figure of 623 counties probably comes from the proposed "Southern Black Belt" federal commission region. There are a few links to more info on this topic in that paragraph. Pfly 01:23, 16 June 2007 (UTC)