User:Studentuser65210/Black Belt in the American South

In certain areas of what was once the Black Belt, citizens began to honor the events that took place there.

In Selma, Alabama there is the Central Loop located in the heart of the city, which is rich in the Black Belt history. The Civil War Battle of Selma and the Voting Rights era were the heart of Selma's history. One attraction of Selma is the Edmund Pettus Bridge. This bridge gained widespread popularity when activists marched pridefully from Selma to Montgomery in opposition to discrimination against African Americans. Law enforcement came in and forcefully handled the protesters, with tear gas and physically assaulting the protesters. This showed the injustice and discrimination that the African Americans faced when they were just trying to fight for their rights. These events are now on TV for everyone to witness, and are termed “Bloody Sunday”.

Led by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, the Voting Rights emerged. The people involved in the Voting Rights arranged the First Baptist Church. This church was used as a vehicle to give food, clothes, and supplies to fellow Voting Rights activists. The building where King spoke out against the discrimination that the African Americans were bearing, the church was destroyed in 1894 by law enforcement. In 1982, it was rebuilt as a historic site. It is the initial point where people go to start the Martin Luther King Jr. Street Historic Tour.

To honor one of the martyrs of the civil rights area, the Interpretive Center was constructed as part of the historic tour. The Interpretive Center replicates how the Kings lived, with replicas of furniture, paintings, and household items which the Kings had in their house during the time. Additionally, there is a film shown during the tour that is called, “Here I stand”. It is a reenactment of how the King's house was bombed during the boycott.

Industrialization in small farming production was a mark of the history of the Black Belt. In Auburn, there were 1116 acres of land that were contaminated with fescue toxicity and were fed to cattle. This was just one of the 5 stations that were poisoned with toxic pesticides and fed cattle toxins to produce a higher quantity of food. Now, the plots have been transformed into the Black Belt Research and Experimentation Center. Auburn University used the lands that were filled with toxins to study how to manage fungus-infected pesticides and helped contribute to her beef production in the US. This area is used by students at Auburn for research but also is open for visitors to see the progression of farming in the Black Belt.

The Tuskegee Institution National Historic Site: Carver Museum pays homage to Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. Each of these men worked to reform the agriculture system that was negatively transformed by discrimination and racism. When the African Americans were pushed out of their righteous land, the Tuskegee Institute was founded by Washinton in 1881. This institution helped to educate African Americans about how to farm, their legal land rights, and the financial managerial aspect of farming.

The Carver Museum honors the professor and activist who worked tirelessly to transform Southern agriculture. The museum holds original photographs, physical objects that were used during the time, and live reenactments.

In 1939, the US government let African Americans train to be Airmen In the United States Military. Civil Pilot Training was enacted and took place at the Tuskegee Institute. The men learned how to fly and navigate a plane, combat weather, and climate issues, and engineer the plans. When the US had entered World War II, the airmen began to report for duty. Now termed the “Tuskegee Experiment”, 992 pilots and 10,000 people of staff had more to fight against than the white airmen who were trained to fight the enemy overseas. The Airmen who had parallel trading to the white airmen had to suffer through the racist climate in the South and the segregation in the US surrounding them as being the first black airmen.

To honor this in 1988, President Clinton passed a law that instituted the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at Norton Field.

Peter Daniels investigated how the government pushed back on supporting small farms and farmers and pushed more towards a climate of capitalism. Hierarchical systems were a proponent in this climate of capitalism that eroded the agricultural business. In 1913, the USDA planned to distribute payments to the farmers. The farmers felt like they were being pushed to the margin with the empty promises the FHA and Georgia government was giving them. This shows that the FHA, local, and national governments had racist motivation behind reforming the slave system and their efforts were not satisfactory. The USDA was only focusing on large and industrial farms. In turn, this would lead the small farmers (part of the Black Belt) off and out of their lands.

Salter, who worked at Tougaloo College, studied how industrialization affected Black farmers. They talked about the fact that the chemical herbicides that the government had used to produce crops more quickly and of lesser quality, started to deteriorate the physical integrity of the lands. Farmers like the Salters could no longer depend on crops like cotton and seasonal crops to support their families, or sell enough to support their families. Even farmers who had more money saved before the government took over their farmlands were still in a parallel position to the lower class farmers. The family farmers and their lands were being replaced by industrial means, and their families stood no chance physically nor did their farms.