of the state. The name referred to its fertile soil, and the area was largely developed for cotton plantations, worked by numerous enslaved African Americans in the antebellum period. After emancipation following the Civil War, many of the African Americans stayed in the area and worked as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. The county has been majority black since before the war.

Dallas County produced more cotton by 1860 than any other county in the state, requiring a large supply of workers, who