My dad’s family were sharecroppers. Both my parents picked cotton. Took a long time to fill those giant sacks with the fluffy white poofs.
When my family picked cotton, I was 9 the last time we were in the fields, the pay was $3.00 per hundred pounds. If you were a good picker you could get 200 pounds per day. That’s six bucks for leaving the house around 6 A.M. and getting home at 6 P.M.
Earlier in the spring we chopped the weeds out of cotton fields for $6.00 a day. Sun up to sun down. I think I was 12 or 13 before I ever saw a black man. And that wasn’t in a cotton field.
I picked cotton as a child (six to 12 years of age)and I am white. The worst thing it ever did for me was enable me to throw one hell of a fastball and throw a football 60 yards.
that work today would kill our youth