This racial seepage is
confined almost wholly to the Italian and the Slav.
There is a vast acreage of unoccupied good land in the South, which
the negro, usually satisfied with a bare living, has neither the
enterprise nor the thrift to cultivate. The prejudice of the former
slave owner against the foreign immigration for many years retarded
the development of this land. About 1880, however, groups of Italians,
attracted by the sunny climate and the opportunities for making a
livelihood, began to seep into Louisiana. By 1900 they numbered over
seventeen thousand. When direct sailings between the Mediterranean and
the Gulf of Mexico were established, their numbers increased rapidly
and New Orleans became one of the leading Italian centers in the
United States. From the city they soon spread into the adjoining
region. Today they grow cotton, sugar-cane, and rice in nearly all the
Southern States. In the deep black loam of the Yazoo Delta they
prosper as cotton growers. They have transformed the neglected slopes
of the Ozarks into apple and peach orchards. New Orleans, Dallas,
Galveston, Houston, San Antonio, and other Southern cities are
supplied with vegetables from the Italian truck farms. At
Independence, Louisiana, a colony raises strawberries. In the black
belt of Arkansas they established Sunnyside in 1895, a colony which
has survived many vicissitudes and has been the parent of other
similar enterprises.
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