The Black Belt: How Soil Types Determined the 2008 Election in the Deep South

Edit: credit for the original insight on the cotton-electoral connection seems to belong to Allen Gathman, a biology professor at SE Missouri State University. The Pin-the-Tail blog referenced previously seems to have picked it up later and failed to attribute the source; the post below has been corrected accordingly.

This is not a political blog. However, this is a story I couldn't pass up: the story of how voting patterns in the 2008 election were essentially determined 85 million years ago, in the Cretaceous Period. It's also a story about how soil science relates to political science, by way of historical chance.

It's also a story best told with maps, beginning with this one:


This is the map showing county-level election results in the southeastern USA, courtesy of the New York Times website. Most of these are "red" states, but the county-level detail shows an interesting phenomenon: a crescent of blue that runs in an arc from the Mississippi River floodplain to central North Carolina. This had struck me as curious when I saw it after the election, but I regret that I didn't investigate it further until the story was explained over the weekend on the Strange Maps blog.

Allen Gathman, a biology professor in Missouri, had also seen the pattern and recognized it as a function of land use in the deep South. He posted the electoral map above alongside a map of cotton production in 1860: sure enough, the "blue" counties correlated with cotton production in the slavery era. Here's a mash-up of the two maps from Strange Maps contributor Mark Root-Willey:

Each dot in the overlay map represents 2,000 bales of cotton production in 1860. Recall from your American history class that cotton production, a high-value but labor-intensive industry, was one of the prime economic reasons why Southern states chose to maintain the institution of slavery instead of maintaining the Union.

Fascinating stuff, but these maps reminded me that I had seen a similar pattern before, in satellite maps like this one:


View Larger Map

There's that crescent again. A closer look reveals that the lighter-colored band in the satellite image consists mostly of agricultural fields. Here's a detail of Noxubee County, one of the blue counties in eastern Mississippi that's located in the middle of the crescent:


View Larger Map

It turns out that this crescent actually has a name: the "Black Belt," a name that refers both to the area's racial demographics and to the rich, loamy soils that were ideal for cotton crops.

Allen Tullos of Emory University has an excellent essay on the Black Belt that's available online from the Southern Spaces journal. His article observes that

Half of Alabama's enslaved population was concentrated within ten Black Belt counties where the exploitation of their labor made this one of the richest regions in the antebellum United States.

Tullos's essay also includes a quote from Booker T. Washington, who gave this assessment of the Black Belt in 1901:

"I have often been asked to define the term 'Black Belt.' So far as I can learn, the term was first used to designate a part of the country which was distinguished by the colour of the soil. The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturaly rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. Later, and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a political sense - that is, to designate the counties where the black people outnumber the white.

A hundred years later, the "black belt" still contains a high concentration of African Americans, who, as a demographic group, voted overwhelmingly in favor of Barack Obama.

To review so far: the blue counties can be explained by the black population, whose ancestors were brought there because of white supremacy, and black soil.

But how did the soil get there, and why is it in this unusual crescent-shaped band? In an essay on the area's ecology, Joe MacGown, Richard Brown, and JoVonn Hill of the Mississippi Entomological Museum write that "the entire region is underlain by Selma Chalk formed from Upper Cretaceous marine deposits. Depending on the exact consistency of the parent material, the chalk weathers into a variety of soil types which supports a mosaic of habitats ranging from prairie to forest." Here's their map of this geological formation - look familiar?



One last map to bring it full circle, from blue counties, to ancient blue seas. Below are two maps of North America in the late Cretaceous Period, made by Professor of Geology Ron Blakey at the University of Northern Arizona. The map on the left shows the South during the early Cretaceous, about 115 million years ago, and the map on the right shows the South during the Late Cretaceous, about 85 million years ago. These shallow, tropical seas, teeming with marine life, laid the deposits that would eventually become the rich "black belt" soils. Note how the crescent of cotton farms in 1860, and of Democratic-voting counties in 2008, also follows the crescent of these ancient shorelines:



For further reading:
Allen Tullos, "The Black Belt." From Southern Spaces, April 2004.

Joe MacGown, Richard Brown, and JoVonn Hill, "The Black Belt in Mississippi." From the Mississippi Entomological Museum.

Ron Blakey, "Paleogeography and Geologic Evolution of North America: Images that track the ancient landscapes of North America"

Climate Change: a Monroe Doctrine for the Arctic

From Der Spiegel:

Ironically, while the world worries about climate change, global warming is triggering great hopes in Greenland. If the Arctic waters were truly ice-free in the summer in five to 10 years, which would be significantly sooner than previously feared, this could be good for Greenland -- at least economically.

The port of Qaqortoq in southern Greenland. From Der Spiegel.

Almost 200 years after the Monroe Doctrine, climate change is making the relationship between the Kingdom of Denmark and its arctic colony about as substantial as the melting pack ice. Geographically, Greenland (technically a "semi-autonomous republic") is the largest remaining European colony in North America. Its predominantly Inuit population drives a hardscrabble economy: Greenland exports lots of fish, and it imports lots of alcohol.

But with melting ice and increasing global demand for natural resources, Greenland looks set to storm into the global economy. The island stands to become a sort of Arctic Dubai by exploiting tremendous offshore oil reserves, which, in turn, will help accelerate the disappearance of the ice that's holding it back.

The Pittsburgh Menagerie

A flock of wild turkeys (crossing the street below the bridge) in a ravine of Pittsburgh's Schenley Park. Photo courtesy of Timothy Wisniewski.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, zoologist Mark Browning lists some of the wildlife sightings he's had in the Steel City: bobcats, coyote, ravens, beavers, red foxes, herds of deer and flocks of wild turkey, bald eagles, and river otters.

Pittsburgh is characterized by steep hillsides (hence the city's famous inclines) and undeveloped ravines, which act as wooded wildlife corridors for critters moving into the city from the rural outskirts. Since passage of the Clean Water Act, animals like beavers, otters, and bald eagles have moved in to reinhabit the banks of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. As in any city, humans' backyards, garbage, and feeders, plus an absence of predators, attract other mammals, like rats, coyote, and deer.

The Zoo of Processed Meats

And speaking of "real food" and the imperative of being more aware of where your meals come from, Banksy has opened a new pet store where a lot of industrialized critters have been rescued from the freezer case to wait for a good home. Sort of like a humane society for processed meats and lab bunnies. It's only open until Halloween in NYC's East Village - go if you can!









Find more domesticated consumer products - not just processed foods - in terrariums at the Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill.

The Church of Michael Pollan

Last night I joined Portland Psst! and the Jordans Meats Mycologist on a trip to Bates College in Lewiston for a free lecture by Michael Pollan, the journalist who's become a guru for the organic/local foods movement by virtue of his three most recent books, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire.

The Bates College chapel, allegedly the largest venue on campus, was ridiculously packed, with at least seven hundred people of all ages in attendance. The fire marshall made about a hundred people in the aisles leave before the lecture could begin.

Pollan was an engaging speaker, and had a quiver of entertaining anecdotes about the food and nutrition industries. His main arguments were aimed to dispel the notion that we can understand human dietary needs or dietary evils as discrete sets of chemical nutrients. Real foods, he pointed out, are complex, living systems, much like the human digestive system. Principles of "nutrition" are little more than articles of faith.

In fact, Pollan's opening remarks laid out a number of similarities between the nutrition industry and organized religion. I found the metaphor a bit ironic, given the fact that he was standing in the pulpit of a chapel and speaking to hundreds of eager disciples. I completely agree that we spend too much time obsessing over what we eat (mostly, whether it has trans fats, or omega threes, or corn syrup, or animal products, or whatever). But at the same time, as the huge crowd attests, the American obsession with food has been very, very good for Pollan and his book sales.

What Pollan is really asking us for is for a different kind of obsession over our food. Instead of poring over abstract "Nutrition Facts," we should think more about where our food comes from and the natural and human resources that brought it to us. If we knew more about the differences between a home-cooked meal and a processed TV dinner sourced from feedlots and agribusiness factories, or the differences between an organic apple shipped from New Zealand and an unlabeled apple from the orchard five miles away, then our economy, our environment, and our bodies would probably all be a lot healthier.

As someone who obsesses over where my sewage goes, I'm only too happy to explore where my food came from. And as an aspiring interpreter of the urban environment, I'll be curious to see how Pollan convinces the rest of America to become agro-naturalists.

Pollan's dietary advice boils down this seven-word incantation: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." To which I would only add, "And get over yourself already."

San Francisco Bay, in 1915 and 2008

Source of historic map: San Francisco History Index, by Z Publishing.

Some landmarks of note: Treasure Island, which does not exist in the 1915 map, is an artificial island originally used as an airport and built from landfill that was dredged from the bottom of the Bay during the Great Depression.

The Port of Oakland was also constructed from landfill on the northern side of San Antonio Creek. Some landfilling work is already evident in the 1915 map. The airstrip on the south side of the Creek in the 2008 view is the Alameda Naval Air Station.

To view the entire map overlay in Google Earth or Google Maps, I've posted this overlay as a KML file on the Google Earth Community.

Opossums, William Howard Taft, and an important book for your survivalist cache

Continuing an occasional series of posts on urban wildlife, here is everything you need to know about North America's native marsupial, the Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana).

Not playing possum: a roadside opossum carcass in suburban Yarmouth, Maine.

One benefit of riding my bike to work in the suburbs is my frequent sightings of urban and suburban wildlife species. Most of them are roadkill.

Because of roads, fragmented habitat, and other characteristics of urban landscapes, the wildlife habitats in which humans are the dominant species tend to favor critters like the opossum, which, like the Norway rat, has a short life span, a flexible diet, and large litters of offspring. Thanks to suburbanization, the Virginia opossum's range is actually increasing, north into Canada and to the west coast.

It's unclear why, but the opossum is frequently associated with hillbilly culture. Abroad, other opossum species are a popular game animal, and as late as the 1960s, opossums were a common enough source of food to warrant this recipe in the Joy of Cooking:

"If possible, trap 'possum and feed it on milk and cereals for 10 days before killing. Clean, but do not skin. Treat as for pig by immersing the unskinned animal in water just below the boiling point. Test frequently by plucking at the hair. When it slips out readily, remove the possum from the water and scrape. While scraping repeadedly, pour cool water over the surface of the animal. Remove small red glands in small of back and under each foreleg between shoulder and rib. Parboil... 1 hour. Roast as for pork, page 421."*

At the turn of the last century, there was an effort to market "Billy Possum," which was associated with William Howard Taft's presidency as the "Teddy Bear" was with Roosevelt's.

Unfortunately, none of the "Billy Possum" references I found were able to provide context for the phenomenon. I'm sure there's scholarly research, somewhere, on whether the "Billy Possum" was a legitimate marketing effort from the stuffed animal industry or a Democratic Party insult against William Howard Taft. Either way, Billy Possum didn't catch on.**

Here's a fact that doesn't really fit anywhere in the narrative, so I'll make a cheap pun and stick it here (and here): the "Didelphis" in the opossum's scientific name refers to the animals' bifurcated sex organs.

There's an Oppossum Society of the U.S. which laments the plight of opossums in urban habitats: "As development of once rural land increases, the opossum continues to be pushed out of its natural habitat and forced into closer proximity to people, often with injurious consequences to the opossum."

The OSUS has an unusually cute picture of an opossum on their home page, but come on: these are animals that survive 2 years, at the most, in the wild. Providing "for the care and treatment of injured and orphaned wild opossums for release back into the environment," as the Opossum Society does, kind of seems like coddling an adult human in a nursing home for twenty years, then dumping him naked in the Alaskan wilderness for his retirement.

*By the way, according to the source of this passage, the 1962 edition of Joy of Cooking also includes this illustration of how to skin a gray squirrel:Urban survivalists, take note: a mid-century edition of The Joy of Cooking is an essential addition to your apocalyptic supply cache.

**Taft didn't catch on, either: he received the worst reelection drubbing in American history when he finished a distant third behind Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912. His post-presidency honors are pretty scant, but the town of Moron, California did decide to honor Taft by changing its name after a big fire in the 1920s (according to Wikipedia).

Edward Burtynsky's "Manufactured Landscapes"

For the next month, Bowdoin College's "Center for the Common Good" is hosting a number of events centered around the "Manufactured Landscapes" photography of Edward Burtynsky.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil Refineries No. 18,
Saint John, New Brunswick 1999

Burtynsky is an Ansel Adams for 21st-century environmentalism. Like Adams, he produces stunning, large-format photographs that are beautiful and can induce a sense of vertigo from their epic scale. While Adams was closely associated with 20th-century environmental groups like the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club, and was a strong advocate for preserving an idea of "pristine" nature, Burtynsky makes the human use of nature - in places like mines, Chinese factories, and landfills - his primary subject. Burtynsky is also aligned with the vanguard of 21st-century environmentalism, WorldChanging.com (check out this video he made for them).

Edward Burtynsky: Bao Steel #2,
Shanghai, 2005

Unfortunately, I'm afraid the internet can't do fair justice to these photographs. Luckily for those of us who live in Maine, an exhibition of Burtynsky's photographs will run at Bowdoin College in Brunswick from October 23rd to Christmas, in conjunction with a number of lectures and screenings of Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary of Burtynsky. Here's the schedule of events.