SCLC #595 — Farm-tenure 15,257 resists clean split

Printed p.190 / PDF leaf 106: agriculture dominated 15 of 17 selected low-voting counties. Exact wording: “Two-thirds of the 15,257 Negroes who till the soil in the 15 are tenants or croppers; some of the remainder are sharecroppers.”

Denominator = Black people who tilled the soil in those 15 counties — not all Black residents, not all 17, not all 21. Rounded two-thirds, not exact headcount (~10,171 is arithmetic illustration only). Because “croppers” sits inside the two-thirds and “sharecroppers” appears in the remainder, the sentence does not permit a clean non-overlapping tenant/cropper/sharecropper/owner breakdown. Preserve wording; do not silently emend.

Mechanization and reduced labor demand are linked to increased vulnerability to economic reprisal — explanatory assessment, not measured individual eviction probability. Related #590 (Hancock/Fayette income), #594 (TN stopgap).

Source: 1961-black-belt-farm-tenure-15257-cropper-category-ambiguity.