In these new lands, men found work at Ford, their hands greasy and their shifts long, but their paychecks allowed them to send their children to schools with opportunities they’d never dreamed of in the Delta. In them, Black families built tight-knit communities, their churches and businesses thriving in a new world of industry and ambition, where the future finally felt like more than a dream.
Image: The Buckeye Steel Castings Company in Columbus, Ohio Ohio Historical Society
11/25
Back in the Delta, the land began to empty. The 1950 census marked the beginning of a population decline that never stopped, the first sign of a slow exodus that would stretch over decades. The Black families who had anchored the land left first—-the fields, once filled with these men, women, and children, now stretched silent under the sun, the cotton remaining as a hollow symbol of a bygone era.
Image: Lange, Dorothea. Cotton hoers move from one field to another., 1937 June.
12/25