1. Visit a page from the 1940 U.S. Census. Explain that a census is a process of recording information about a population. This page is a record of the people who lived on a plantation outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, and was taken around the same time as the photographs we previously examined.
If the image is too small to read, you can access a high-resolution scan of the full census page here.)
In your notebooks, please answer the following questions...
- What kind of information is collected on this census form?
- What race are most of the people who live on the plantation? Can you find anyone who is not a member of that race?
- Look at column 28, which lists “Occupation.” What is the reported occupation for most of the African Americans on this list? What is the reported occupation for one of the white people on the plantation?
- Look at column 7, which lists the names of the plantation’s inhabitants. Locate the name “McKinley Morganfield.” What sort of information does the census tell us about Muddy Waters in 1940?
- Based on the materials discussed thus far, what are some general conclusions we can make about the lives of many African Americans living in Mississippi around 1940?
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