2008 Voting Patterns Linked To 1860 Cotton Production

The above map shows that the “blue” areas of the South, counties where Barack Obama outpolled John McCain are where there was a great deal of cotton production at the start of the Civil War.    

This map is taken from Strange Maps. Or, you can’t always be sure about these things, a blog called Pin The Tail.

What was true abut the cotton production areas of 1860 and the strong Obama areas of 2008, is that they are places where black folks lived back then and still live today.   

Click here for a U.S. Census list of the percentage of black people living in each of the states. Mississippi is first at 37.2% and Montana is last at 0.6%.  

This link to the New York Times shows where either Republicans or Democrats ran ahead in Presidential balloting from 2004. For the most part, the only parts where Senator McCain gained on George W. Bush was in mostly white areas of the South and Appalachia.

I hope folks in the rural South, elsewhere in the South, and in Appalachia, figure out that insularity and racial suspicion in an increasingly diverse nation, is not the ticket to helping their kids in what will be a difficult economic future.