The Black Belt Communists
During the Great Depression, black sharecroppers and the Communist Party waged war against tenant farming in the South.
(Corbis / Getty Images)
The rural world that Communist organizers entered in 1930–31 made the poverty-stricken streets of Birmingham, Alabama, look like a paradise. Cotton farmers were in the midst of a crisis at least a decade old. After World War I, cotton prices plummeted, forcing planters to reduce acreage despite rising debts, and the boll weevil destroyed large […]
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