Word: beltings
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Clinton was born at the bottom of the state, in its black belt, which has a bleak history. Twenty-five miles to the west, the state's most famous demagogue (Jeff Davis, named for the Confederate leader) was born, in a county (Little River) where more than a hundred freed blacks were murdered after the Civil War. About 25 miles south, a cemetery from early in the century was dug up, revealing African-American bones ravaged by the worst malnutrition recorded in this country. Hope is placed on stingy soil that raises, paradoxically, only large things: thick piney woods...
...blacks, but not with them. He would have to grow, along with his region, in the stormy civil-rights days ahead. But he is at ease among blacks -- as Jimmy Carter was -- and they make up his most solid base of support in the state. He carries the black belt easily, with more than 90% of the African-American vote, in every election. Considered a moderate outside the state, he is opposed at home as "too liberal," too supportive of minorities...
...state, mountainous Fayetteville is as far as it can be from Hope's flat piney woods. There were never many blacks in the clefts and dells where independent farmers tended little plots. This area had little sympathy for the owners of antebellum cotton plantations in the black belt, and many in this Republican stronghold fought for the Union. No wonder the Reconstruction government started the state college in this receptive, if isolated, place...
Those scratching a living in the hills wanted to be left alone, and certain growers in the black belt did not want others to see how they ruled their plantations. This prickly isolation took on a rabid note after the Civil War, when federal interference created the "Carpetbagger Constitution" with strong powers. As soon as the "Redeemers" drove out the carpetbaggers, a deliberately weak government was created by the constitution of 1874, which is still in force...
Take the parties. They arose in the 19th century as a two-way transmission belt. They gathered grass-roots sentiment and sent it up to the governing elites, who in turn used them to mobilize an otherwise unreachable mass electorate. A century ago you needed party rallies and precinct captains to get the message out. In the age of television and satellites...