Freed slaves or the enslaved negroes/black farmers migrated to western territories because the west was new and the United States Agrarian Reform had promised them a free land which is forty (40) acres and a mule under the Homestead Act of 1862.
Yield losses associated with the boll weevil reduced cotton acreage from a historical high of 5.2 million acres during 1914 to 2.6 million acres in 1923.
