Workers in a Field

Workers in a Field

Sharecroppers in the South

This photograph is of workers who are working in the Delta post-emancipation period. The photo is showing them doing day labor. On Hopson Plantation cotton choppers were hired for seventy-five cents to one dollar a day and trucked to the plantation. Cotton chopping, which is primarily the thinning of the cotton plants, is normally done by hand using a hoe, with the person handling the hoe referred to as a “cotton chopper.” However, there have also been many attempts to build mechanical contrivances to thin the cotton, and those machines were also usually called “cotton choppers,” but sometimes “cotton blockers” (Cobb 98). The term “blocking” presumably arose because, by chopping, the closely spaced row of cotton plants was cut into more widely spaced blocks of plants. Using this method of cotton chopping, the Delta became a place of rapid expansion and growth. Within this photo, the workers do not look happy. This is due to the fact that they are working in terrible conditions with very little to no pay. These horrible conditions are very common within the Delta. The author of The Most Southern Place on Earth remarks, “As a booming plantation kingdom, the turn-of-the-century Delta shrouded the ruthless efficiency and ambition of the New South in the romantic, laid-back, precapitalist imagery of the Old” (Cobb 98). Within this quotation, it is seen that one of the major causes of the civil war and the new South was a booming plantation economy. This is significant and important of the fact the South wanted to grow and expand its economy. This photo exemplifies all of this and makes it known that while slavery may not seem to be around, the effects were still felt for a long period after it.

Marion Post Walcott

https://flashbak.com/life-on-mississippi-delta-plantations-by-marion-post-walcott-c-1939-433199/mississippi-plantation-1930s-1940s-marion-post-walcott-30/

August 1940

Warner Greene

Marion Post Wolcott

Photo

English