African-Americans in the U.S. Economy Since Emancipation

The Emancipation Proclamation and Union victory in the Civil War brought freedom to some 4 million African-American slaves, who at that time made up about 90 per cent of the nation’s black population. African-Americans resided overwhelmingly in the country’s Southern states, concentrated in the cotton plantation belt. The large majority of newly freed blacks would find their economic fates tied to the rural Southern economy, as would most of their descendants for the next half-century.