Agenda - 08-25-1997 - C2 - Laserfiche WebLink

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031 Blacks were also influenced by this atmosphere of prosperity. Although the majority African American farmers remained as laborers or sharecroppers,one-fourth were able to purchase farms by 1910. Countywide, rural Black communities expanded around new churches at the fringes of white hamlets. Examples of these communities include that near Carr which erected White Oak Grove Baptist Church above the crossroads in 1914 and on the outskirts of Cedar Grove where Lee's Chapel Baptist Church was erected in 1918 (Lefler and Wager 1953,pp. 305-306). After World War I significant improvements in transportation were both the product and cause of transitioning agricultural conditions. Improved roads and bridges coupled with the introduction of the automobile yielded unprecedented mobility. However,farmers continued to encounter impassable roads for months out of each year when traveling farm-to-market routes well into the 1950s. These circumstances perpetuated the ongoing importance of the local community store(Lefler and Wager 1953,pp.230-250). 1920s to Post-World War II The post-World War I period of prosperity was fleeting at the-turn-of-the-century and falling crop returns plummeted still further during the Great Depression. Tobacco and cotton prices dropped by more than half between the late 1920s and the early 1930s. The devastating effects of the Depression along with the plague of the boll weevil during the 1920s and 1930s drastically decreased cotton production. By the 1940s, however, more options became open to farmers and many turned to dairy farming and livestock production in the southern county,while still others continued the migration that had begun in the late 1800s to nearby urban areas to labor in cotton mills. Also, bright leaf tobacco prices began to rise and stabilize and tobacco remained the preferred cash crop in northern Orange County where the Cedar Grove Township is located (Bell as stated in Mattson 1996,p.43). Although the prevalence of tobacco farms necessitated small land tracts,dairying and livestock production,which had become commonplace in the southeast county,required larger tracts. In the late 1940s and early 1950s,there were about 18 farms in Orange County that averaged 765 acres in size,even though the median farm size had declined by this time to an average of only 63 acres. Though modest farms still dotted the landscape,small land tenancy declined as advances in agricultural technology took hold in the mid-twentieth century(Lefler and Wager 1953, pp. 230-250). Thus,as an outgrowth of the new trends in agriculture during the 1940s,new patterns of land use began to emerge in Orange County--the affects of which are apparent in the present-day landscape.