The second, as the title says, represent cotton production density in the same area of the South in 1860, where, clearly, those who would have been picking cotton were segrated former slaves of African origin.
Now take a look at the overlay.
Now I'm not making any correlated conclusion, but the maps is interesting nonetheless. Lots more comment about it on the original post.
5 comments:
Perhaps it simply means the days of slavery are long gone and the people have spoken. How truly brilliant that graph is on so many different levels.
Democracy at its best.
The cotton picking areas probably have a descendent black population still living there (or became areas were black people would move to).
African Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat and comparing this year's election results with previous year's there's no big difference with general Democrat voting patterns in previous Presidential elections.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html (you can click down to County level and select which year on the left)
There's actually a lot less blue on some of the maps in 2008 than there was in previous years, especially 1996.
The Democratic/cotton picking areas are also mainly urban ones(Jackson, Little Rock, Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta, Athens, etc...)
Other sad blues nuts will note the blue diamond of the Mississippi Delta (the area between the Miss and the Yazoo, not the mouth of the river) is strongly Democrat. The largest town in the Delta is Greenville, with a population of all of 36000.
Not at all surprising - there were studies in the Uk in the 1960s and 70s which linked voting behaviour back to whether your ancestors were likely to have Royalists or Roundheads in the English Civil War. Half the Tory Party still base their views on Europe on WW2.
LOve the generalisation at the end. class.
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