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• Cotton Belt
  Cotton Belt

  noun

  the part of the southern U.S. where cotton is grown, originally Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, but now often extended to include parts of Texas and California.
• cotton belt
  cotton belt

  noun

  a belt of land in the southeastern US that specializes in the production of cotton

Cotton Belt

American  

noun

1. (sometimes lowercase) the part of the southern U.S. where cotton is grown, originally Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, but now often extended to include parts of Texas and California.

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cotton belt British  

noun

1. a belt of land in the southeastern US that specializes in the production of cotton

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Etymology

Origin of Cotton Belt

An Americanism dating back to 1870–75

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Cotton Belt cotton belt

In many of the areas of the Cotton Belt, slaves were the majority of the population.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025

Easily the raunchiest Confederate relic north of the Cotton Belt is Maryland’s never-in-mode state song, “Maryland, My Maryland.”

From Washington Post ● Apr. 9, 2021

“The name Cotton Belt Route was considered, too, but Dixie was chosen to promote the South.”

From New York Times ● Jan. 20, 2020

Amid a vast migration during the early 20th century, tens of thousands of black people came to California’s farm country from far-off states in the Cotton Belt and the Dust Bowl.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 24, 2019

I was talking with Policeman Sam Hall at the alley next to the Cotton Belt ticket office when the first shot was fired.

From Brann the Iconoclast — Volume 12 by Brann, William Cowper

In 2009, India’s agricultural export agency discovered wide-scale fraud in the country’s cotton belt, with entire villages certifying genetically modified cotton as organic.

From New York Times ● Feb. 13, 2022

Born into slavery in the Georgia cotton belt in 1818, she was seemingly destined for a life of hard labor and a death in obscurity.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2020

It may foreshadow the discovery of other forgotten slave cemeteries as the city of Tallahassee’s boundaries edge northward into the county’s former cotton belt.

From Washington Times ● Jun. 14, 2020

Across the central cotton belt, especially in Telangana and Maharashtra, at-risk farmers were particularly impoverished and often lacked irrigation infrastructure that would stabilize cotton farming.

From Salon ● Dec. 15, 2019

This applies also to the older portions of the eastern cotton belt.

From American Negro Slavery A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime by Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell