Book contents
- Land, Promise, and Peril
- Cambridge Studies in Stratification Economics: Economics and Social Identity
- Land, Promise, and Peril
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I The Family in an Intemperate Community, State, and Nation
- Part II Family Interiority and Economic Mobility Pathways
- 7 Perennial Sharecroppers
- 8 Quasi-Croppers and Family Interiority
- 9 The Mule-Renter’s Son
- 10 The Byrd Farmers
- 11 Contemporaries of the Second Sunflower Generation
- 12 Central Hills Family and Place in Struggle
- Part III Pathways toward Upward Economic Mobility
- Select Bibliography
- Index
10 - The Byrd Farmers
from Part II - Family Interiority and Economic Mobility Pathways
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2023
Book contents
- Land, Promise, and Peril
- Cambridge Studies in Stratification Economics: Economics and Social Identity
- Land, Promise, and Peril
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I The Family in an Intemperate Community, State, and Nation
- Part II Family Interiority and Economic Mobility Pathways
- 7 Perennial Sharecroppers
- 8 Quasi-Croppers and Family Interiority
- 9 The Mule-Renter’s Son
- 10 The Byrd Farmers
- 11 Contemporaries of the Second Sunflower Generation
- 12 Central Hills Family and Place in Struggle
- Part III Pathways toward Upward Economic Mobility
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 1890, the Mississippi re-segregation constitution became the governing instrument of legal racism. In that same year, of the nine million African Americans in the United States, seven million lived in the South. From 1888 through the 1890s, the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad was selling land in Sunflower County at $5 an acre, on installment plans. The opportunity for wealth-based farming and land ownership brought the Byrds from Sumter County, Alabama, which itself was a settlement originated by Seminole Indians, to Sunflower County, Mississippi, some 205 miles away.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Land, Promise, and PerilRace and Stratification in the Rural South, pp. 194 - 210Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023