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On December 11December 11 is the 345th day (346th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 20 days remaining. Events 1205 John Grey, Bishop of Norwich, elected Archbishop of Canterbury 1792 King Louis XVI of France goes on trial for treason 1816, 1919Events January January 1 Edsel Ford succeeds his father as head of the Ford Motor Company January 5 Spartacist uprising Socialist demonstrations in Berlin turn into attempted communist revolution with Spartacist League in the forefront January 9 Spartacus, the citizens of Enterprise, AlabamaEnterprise is a city located in Coffee County, Alabama. As of the 2000 census, the population of the city is 21,178. Enterprise is famous for a large statue of a mythological woman holding high a huge replica of a Boll Weevil in the town square. The city erected a , the pest that devastated their fields but forced residents to end their dependence on cotton and to pursue mixed farming and manufacturing.

The infestation led to the introduction of the peanutThe Peanut is the edible seed of the plant, Arachis hypogaea''. Although called a nut the peanut is a member of the pea family Fabaceae, and the fruit is not a nut, but a legume or pod. Peanuts develop underground in a woody pod, usually with two seeds to--an alternative crop popularized by the Tuskegee Institute's George Washington Carver. Peanut cultivation not only returned vital nutrients to soils depleted by cotton cultivation, but also proved a successful cash crop for local farmers.

By mid- 1921, the boll weevil had entered South Carolina. In a 1939 interview for the Federal Writers' Project, South Carolina native Mose Austin recalled that his employer was adamant "He don't want nothin' but cotton planted on de place; dat he in debt and hafter raise cotton to git de money to pay wid." Austin let out a long guffaw before recounting, "De boll weevil come...and, bless yo' life, dat bug sho' romped on things dat fall." Austin remembered that the following spring, his employer insisted on planting cotton in spite of warnings from his wife, his employees, and government agricultural experts:

De cotton come up and started to growin', and, suh, befo' de middle of May I looks down one day and sees de boll weevil settin' up dere in de top of dem little cotton stalks waitin' for de squares to fo'm. So all dat gewano us hauled and put down in 1922 made nuttin' but a crop of boll weevils.

"Always Agin It," Place Chapin, South Carolina, John L. Dove, interviewer, January 24, 1939. American Life Histories, 1936–1940

The next year, Austin's employer tried the same ill-fated experiment. Ultimately, the man lost his farm and moved with his disgruntled wife to California.

The boll weevil contributed to the economic woes of Southern farmers during the 1920s--a situation exacerbated by the Great Depression.

Boll weevils was a American political term used in the mid-20th century to describe conservative Southern Democrats.

See Blue Dog Democrats.