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The Missouri Bootheel is the southeasternmost part of the state of Missouri, extending south of 36°30’ north latitude, so called because its shape in relation to the rest of the state resembles the heel of a boot. Strictly speaking, it is composed of the counties of Dunklin, New Madrid, and Pemiscot. However, the term is locally used to refer to the entire southeastern lowlands of Missouri located within the Mississippi Embayment, which includes parts of Butler, Mississippi, Ripley, Scott, Stoddard and extreme southern portions of Cape Girardeau and Bollinger counties. The largest cities in the region are Sikeston and Kennett. The Bootheel and the Oklahoma-Kansas-Missouri border near the 37th parallel north form the two biggest jogs in a nearly straight line of state borders that starts on the Atlantic Ocean with the Virginia–North Carolina border and extends to the tristate border of Nevada, Arizona and Utah. Until the 1920s the district was a wheat-growing area of family farms. Following the invasion of the boll weevil, which ruined the cotton crop in Arkansas, planters moved in. They bought up the land for conversion to cotton commodity crops, bringing along thousands of black sharecroppers.〔Neal R. Peirce and Jerry Hagstrom, ''The Book of America: Inside the Fifty States Today'' (1983), p 594〕 After mechanization of agriculture and other changes in the 1930s, many blacks left the area to go North in the Great Migration. These counties have predominantly white populations in the 21st century, although a few have significant minorities of African Americans. ==History== When Missouri was admitted to the Union, its original border was proposed as an extension of the 36°30′ parallel north that formed the border between Kentucky and Tennessee. This would have excluded the Bootheel. John Hardeman Walker, a pioneer planter in what is now Pemiscot County, argued that the area had more in common with the Mississippi River towns of Cape Girardeau, Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis in Missouri than with its proposed incorporation in the Arkansas Territory. The border was dropped about 50 miles to the 36th parallel north. It follows that parallel about 30 miles until intersecting the St. Francis River, then follows the river back up to about the 36°30′ parallel just west of Campbell, Missouri. According to an apocryphal story in various versions, the Bootheel was added to the state because of the request of some Missourian to remain in the state "as he had heard it was so sickly in Arkansas"; "...full of bears and panthers and copperhead snakes, so it ain't safe for civilized people to stay there over night even." Another legend has the adaptation made by a lovestruck surveyor to spare the feelings of a widow living 50 miles south of the Missouri border, but unaware of it. At one time, the area was known locally as "Lapland, because it's the place where Missouri laps over into Arkansas".〔.〕 During the American Civil War, a number of battles took place in this area, most notably the Battle of Island No. 10. Until the early 20th century, the district was covered by wetlands and swamps, but otherwise was a wheat-growing area of family farms. Lumbering was important in the 1890s until the most valuable trees were taken. In 1905, the Little River Drainage District built an elaborate network of ditches, canals, and levees to drain the swamps, as people believed that the highest use was for agriculture. They did not understand about the important function of wetlands in modifying river flooding. From 1880 to 1930, the population in the area more than tripled as many workers were brought in. Cotton became the chief commodity crop.〔Bonnie Stepenoff, "The Last Tree Cut Down": The End of the Bootheel Frontier, 1880-1940," ''Missouri Historical Review'' (1995) 90#1 pp 61-78.〕 Meanwhile, the boll weevil ruined the cotton crop in Arkansas, and planters moved into the Bootheel, bought up the new lands or leased them from insurance companies that had invested in the area, and recruited thousands of black sharecroppers as workers.〔Neal R. Peirce and Jerry Hagstrom, ''The Book of America: Inside the Fifty States Today'' (1983) p 594〕 In contrast to the other cotton-growing areas of the South, where blacks had been disfranchised around the turn of the century, they were allowed to vote in Missouri and played a political role in this area.〔Will Sarvis, "Black Electoral Power in the Missouri Bootheel, 1920s-1960s," ''Missouri Historical Review'' (2001) 95#2 pp 182-202.〕 In the main, political power was held by white power brokers, especially Democrat J.V. Conran from the 1930s to 1960s. He worked closely with African Americans in the region. An ally of Senator and President Harry S Truman, Conran packed the ballot boxes but did bring efficiency and government services, and helped improve economic and social conditions.〔Will Sarvis, ''J.V. Conran and Rural Political Power: Boss Mythology in the Missouri Bootheel'' (2012)〕 During the Great Depression, the Farm Security Administration said that the Bootheel was a "paradox of rich land and poor people." In 1935 three-fourths of all farms were operated by tenants, most of them black.〔Farm Security Administration. ''Southeast Missouri: A Laboratory for the Cotton South'' (Washington, Dec. 30, 1940)〕 Radicals in the Southern Tenant Farmers Union organized protests by hundreds of sharecroppers in early 1939, alleging that landlords had evicted masses of tenants because they did not want to share federal AAA checks with them. The Farm Security Administration, a New Deal agency, responded by providing low-cost rental housing for 500 cropper families. It awarded $500,000 in grants to 11,000 families in 1939. The protest fizzled out as Communist and Socialist elements battled for control.〔Louis Cantor, "A Prologue to the Protest Movement: The Missouri Sharecropper Roadside Demonstration of 1939," ''Journal of American History'' (1969) 55#4 pp. 804-822 (in JSTOR )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Missouri Bootheel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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