Has the Revolution been Specified? A Critical Assessment of the Status of Research on the Voting Rights Act and Black Politics‪.‬

Below Macon [Georgia] the worm grows darker; for now we approach the Black Belt,--that strange land of shadows, at which even slaves paled in the past, and whence come now only faint and half-intelligible murmurs to the worm beyond. W.E.B. Dubois (1989, 79) Dubois's comments originally published in 1903 continue to provide an accurate assessment of what little we know about the political economy of the Black Belt since the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) on August 6, 1965. The contemporary need for more intensive and systematic research on these areas is affirmed by a recent controversy in Gadsden County, FL that may prove to be a common example of contemporary Black Belt political life even in the wake of the Voting Rights Revolution. Gadsden County is Florida's sole majority black county (57% Black) and is also the state's poorest county where young black males endured a 70% rate of unemployment at the close of 2004 (Burlew 2005). Thus, given the poor economic conditions, limited opportunities, and the disproportionate economic hardship experienced by the black residents of this community, on December 21, 2004 the county commission voted to remove the county manager of nearly 7 years by a slim margin of 3-2.