Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Sandra Hughes
Taken: September 25, 2010
Caption: Growing Cotton
Additional Description: This Currier and Ives print shows a busy cotton plantation, planting, weeding, and picking cotton required much backbreaking labor. Plowing fields began in early spring. Enslaved workers planted the crop by the end of April. Throughout the spring and summer, they constantly hoed the fields to keep weeds under control. By late fall, the fully mature cotton was ready for slaves to pick, and then ginning and baling began. After Christmas, the cotton was shipped to New Orleans for sale. Then just a few weeks later, plowing began again. Picking cotton required intense labor from enslaved men, women and children. After the Civil War, sharecroppers and migratory farm workers handpicked cotton until mechanical pickers took their place after World War II. This undated image shows African –American men, women, and children picking cotton. I have wrote you before to advise me whether we would have a sufficient supply of Pork for the plantation for next year- my son informs me, he is in doubt whether you will raise a sufficient supply of Pork. It will surely be evidence of bad management if such a stock as I left, will not support the plantation… - Andrew Jackson to Graves W. Steele, November 7, 1829
Submitted: February 10, 2012, by Sandra Hughes Tidwell of Killen, Alabama, USA.
Database Locator Identification Number: p192330
File Size: 0.246 Megabytes

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