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242

(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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Note: Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.

Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 11. The Southern Plantation Economy and the Negro Farmer - 7. Historical Reasons for the Relative Lack of Negro Farm Owners - 8. Tenants and Wage Laborers

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242 An American Dilemma
zation is disintegrating—these are the places where renters are most prevalent, where
they move least often, where they are most independent and self-directed, where
they accumulate most cash and credit. These are the tracts which are most often
for sale to the Negro.®®
There has always been an active solidarity among white people to
prevent Negroes from acquiring land in white neighborhoods. The visitor
finds, therefore, that most often he has to get off the main road and into
the backwoods if he wants to see a Negro landowner. The intensity of
those attitudes on the side of the whites—which closely correspond to the
attitudes behind residential segregation in the cities®—^seems to have been
increasing toward the turn of the century. This was the time when the Jim
Crow legislation was built up in the South.*" There actually were even
sporadic attempts in the beginning of the century to institute laws in order
to block Negro ownership in white rural districts.^® It is noteworthy that
the trend toward increase of Negro landownership was halted at about the
same time.^^
The last decade, finally, has brought a new competitive advantage to
the white owner. Government regulations, which have become of great
importance, no doubt have helped the Negro owner along with the white
owner. The fact, however, that the local administration of the new agricul-
tural policies is entirely, or almost entirely, in the hands of white people
cannot fail to make the Negroes a relatively disfavored group. This
problem will be touched upon in the next chapter.
8. Tenants and Wage Laborers
In 1880, 64 per cent of the Southern farms were operated by owners.
The corresponding figure for 1900 had fallen to 53 per cent. By 1930 it
was down to 44 per cent. A majority of the Southern farm operators were
tenants and sharecroppers. There was a similar development in other parts
of the country as well. But nowhere else did it go so far.^* And nowhere
else did this trend have quite as serious ’social implications.
Behind this change are the lagging industrialization, the high rural
fertility rates, and the relatively small opportunities for successful owner-
ship in the South. Not only Negroes, but whites also, were affected by these
factors. Already by 1900’’’ there were more white than Negro tenants in
Southern agriculture, and during the following three decades the number
of white tenants increased by more than 400,000, or roughly 60 per cent,
where as the corresponding figures for nonwhite tenants were 147,000 and
27 per cent, respectively.’^^
There seems to have been a parallel trend in the case of wage laborers,
® See Chapter 29, Section 3.
^See Chapter a 8, Section 4.
* There was no breakdown by color in earlier census reports.

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