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As in other Southern states, the white-dominated state legislature of Alabama passed laws and a constitution that created barriers to voter registration, essentially disenfranchising most blacks and many poor whites. In the Antebellum and Jim Crow eras, the white elite of the Black Belt dominated Alabama state politics well into the 1960s, a trend that has continued to the current day. The physical geography of the 'Black Belt,' as related to the history of this cotton-dependent region, refers to a much larger region of the Southern United States, stretching from Delaware to Texas but centered on the Black Belt of uplands areas of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. After the American Civil War, many freedmen stayed in the area as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, continuing to comprise a majority of the population in many of these counties.

The term took on an additional meaning in the 19th century, when the region was developed for cotton plantation agriculture, in which the workers were enslaved African Americans. The term originally referred to the region's rich, black soil, much of it in the soil order Vertisols. Counties highlighted in pink are sometimes considered part of the region. Counties highlighted in red are historically considered part of the Black Belt region.

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