There is a considerable amount of scholarship that needs to be done on the architecture of the Black Belt region of Alabama. To date, much of the research has been focused on antebellum history and architecture of the region which was influenced by the plantation culture that flourished until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The architecture that grew out of this plantation culture produced some of the finest churches and rural residences in the state, including Rosemount and Thornhill in Greene, Countryside in Camden, and Gaineswood in Demopolis. Most of these fine architectural examples from antebellum Alabama are the work of slaves and stand today as lasting monuments to their talents and creativity. The Black Belt region was the richest area of the state agriculturally. As a result of this wealth that once existed in the region, one can find some of the most outstanding collections of rural small town architecture. Comparatively, the historic architecture found in the Black Belt ranks with the plantation architecture found in the low country of South Carolina and the Mississippi Valley. The Black Belt in nineteenth century Alabama is to southern culture what the lower Chesapeake and James River are to eighteenth century tobacco plantation culture. It strongly reflects the immigration patterns of the early settlers who came to Alabama from South Carolina, Virginia, and southern Maryland, and recreated in the Black Belt the general plantation setting remembered from the areas along the Atlantic seaboard. Nowhere else in Alabama and in other southern states, other than in the lower Mississippi Valley, is there found to be such a strong architectural imprint of this southern plantation culture. In the Black Belt region, one can find the extremes of architecture – fine mansions to modest houses, but not a lot in between. The architecture reflects a very distinct breakdown of race and class. It symbolically represents the social hierarchy that existed, which included a concentrated elite class of whites, a fairly weak white middle class and an African American working class. Prior to 1850, a shortage of skilled craftsman and building materials, compounded by the belated development of Alabama’s railway system, contributed to the isolation of communities, which created architectural folkways. This folk architecture conjures images more firmly grounded in custom and practicality than in any concern for fashion. By 1860, the railroad connected Alabama to the outside, which contributed to the demise of architectural folkways in Alabama, and led to the influence of current Black Belt architecture. During the late 1880s and early 1900s, an emergence of early textile towns formed in Black Belt cities, such as Selma, Uniontown, and Monroeville. Today, the architecture found in these areas is vestiges of this manufacturing culture. The architecture in the Black Belt is not just aesthetic, but also has a story to tell, especially in the twentieth century when the buildings reflected the segregated society that enveloped the region including community institutions such as schools, and to a lesser degree churches.