> >
> > These are all-white areas?
>
> Yup. The explanation I heard back when I used to hang out
> around there
> was that "black people just don't like the
> hills." Genetic, I suppose.
>
I know Doug wrote that in jest, but if you go to my hometown of Welch, West Virginia (much hillier and more mountainous than anyplace in Virginia), just over the mountain than those places I mentioned, there are a fairly high percentage of blacks. So, the fact that those places in southern Virginia have so few blacks has got more to do with the lingering legacy of the Confederacy.
-Thomas