The South has remained the region where the majority of African Americans live. And even with the declining population in the Blackest South, the Blackest Southerners remain. So the question I always ask is not why did Black folks leave, but why did they stay? The answer is home. If everyone had departed, no one would have been left to tend the ancestors’ graves. When you walk past a plantation, even if not outfitted soberly or joyously in the history of slavery, you are forced to remember something. And it is a vile, bloody remembrance, but it is also one that should strike awe at the human
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