3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

Lowndes County lies in the heart of Alabama's so-called Black Belt: the fertile
region whose black soil produces abundant and bountiful crops and where, not so
coincidentally, many of the state's black inhabitants live . In 1966, the land there
produced cotton, corn, and profits--little of which went to the black folks who worked it .
A handful of whites livod, as one observed surmised, like "a class of feudal flies in
amber, fixed in a permanent state of moral decay and financial advantage"s ; of course,
most whites suffered from the same staggering poverty as blacks. In Lowndes, there were
four times as many blacks in 1966 (12,000 to 3,000) but eighty-nine white families
owned ninety percent of the land . Most blacks were sharecroppers or tenants ; a few
owned small plots of land, and fewer still owned small farms. Half of the black women
who worked did so as maids in Montgomery, more than twenty miles distant, for about
$4.00 a day. The median family income for blacks was 5935.00 ; for whites, it was
54,440 .00. The median educational level for blacks was slightly over live years of
schooling ; eighty percent, black and white alike, were functionally illiterate . The schools
and other accommodations for blacks were inferior to comparable facilities for whites 6
Hungry for change, blacks in Lowndes County created what was called at the time
"one of the most broadly democratic political parties in the country" with the help of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), whose aid they solicited as
SAndrew Kopkind, `"fhe Lair of the 81ack Panther," The New Re blic 155 (August
13, 1966) : 10-13 .