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Back in the Delta, the land began to empty. The 1950 census marked the beginning of a population decline that never stopped, the first sign of a slow exodus that would stretch over decades. The Black families who had anchored the land left first—-the fields, once filled with these men, women, and children, now stretched silent under the sun, the cotton remaining as a hollow symbol of a bygone era.

Image: Lange, Dorothea. Cotton hoers move from one field to another., 1937 June.

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