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Farming For A Better Future, page 90
(Left) Photograph of the Destroyed Railway Bridge in Bridgeport, 1861 (Lower Left) Bridgeport Depot, 2010 (Flickr, User Brent Moore)
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Collinsville
Collinsville is located on the southern edge of DeKalb County. It is situated in the Little Wills Valley rather than the Tennessee River Valley. While communities here do not depend on row crop agriculture as much as in the larger, richer river valley, there are some African American communities with a few farming landowners among them. Collinsville is one of the few towns on DeKalb County to have a sizable African American population in the early 20th century.
From 1900 to 1940, the town and surrounding area of Collinsville grew from 201 households to 425 households. The total African American households remained at 47 families from 1900 to 1920 - roughly about 20-25% of the overall population. The peak number of African American households occurred in 1920 when 81 (34%) of 238 total households were families of color. When the population rose substantially in 1940, the majority of that population increase was from the white community, while the community of color slightly decreased.
Although the overall population of Collinsville and the number of African American households within it increased over the decades of the 20th century, (Below) 1947 USGS Topographic Map of Collinsville, Portersville, Alabama Quadrangle - (4618)