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The Cotton Pickers is an 1876 oil painting by the American artist Winslow Homer. [1] It depicts two young African-American women in a cotton field.. Stately, silent and with barely a flicker of sadness on their faces, the two black women in the painting are unmistakable in their disillusionment: they picked cotton before the war and they are still picking cotton afterward.
The first harvesters were only capable of harvesting one row of cotton at a time, but were still able to replace up to forty hand laborers. The current cotton picker is a self-propelled machine that removes cotton lint and seed (seed-cotton) from the plant at up to six rows at a time. There are two types of pickers in use today.
Cotton Pickers, oil painting on panel by William Aiken Walker Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, 1863, oil painting on canvas, 1886, Gibbes Museum of Art. William Aiken Walker (March 11, 1839 – January 3, 1921) was an American artist best known for genre paintings of African-American sharecroppers. He also ...
Cotton is shipped to mills in large 500-pound bales. When the cotton comes out of a bale, it is all packed together and still contains vegetable matter. The bale is broken open using a machine with large spikes, called an opener. To fluff up the cotton and remove the vegetable matter, the cotton is sent through a picker or a similar machine.
Picking cotton was often a subject which was mentioned in songs by African-American blues and jazz musicians in the 1920s–1940s, reflecting their grievances. In 1940, jazz pianist Duke Ellington composed "Cotton Tail" and blues musician Lead Belly wrote "Cotton Fields". In 1951, Big Mama Thornton wrote "Cotton Picking Blues."
Until mechanical cotton pickers were developed, cotton farmers needed additional labor to hand-pick cotton. Picking cotton was a source of income for families across the South. Rural and small town school systems had split vacations so children could work in the fields during "cotton-picking." [57]
Widespread reports of racist text messages sent to Black Americans saying, "you have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation," are spreading across social mediahttps://t.co ...
There were also poor white tenant farmers and sharecroppers who picked cotton. Also, I am most familiar with the expression "cotton-picking hands". As in "Keep your cotton-picking hands away from me!" People who picked cotton had dirty, often cut and callused hands. I think that the expression is about lowliness and filth rather than about race.