[throwthebumsout]

“He gave the whole class cotton, and we were made to pick out the cotton seeds.”

Half the class was white.

The interesting parts:

The teacher referred to himself as “massah”.
“He said, ‘Better clean it right, boy.’”

This guy was seriously into playing the part.

[Sacajaweau]

Half the class was white?? I doubt it.

[piasa]

Picking the seeds out of one cotton bill each was probably the most work any of the kids have done in a year.

[higgmeister]

“He gave the whole class cotton, and we were made to pick out the cotton seeds.”

Idiot teacher, that's not what picking cotton means.

That's carding cotton.   The mechanical way of picking seeds out of raw cotton was the Cotton Gin

A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794.

Picking cotton involved bending down as you walked in a crouch along a row of plants in the field and literally ripped the cotton boll from the pod with a twisting hand motion.

Forty to forty five pounds of cotton would probably be about all you could put in this size sack (6 feet). Sacks were available in 6 foot, 7 1/2 and 9 foot lengths.

No school teacher could ever come close to replicating the experience for students.

My grandfather was a poor sharecropper and my Dad and my spinster Aunts picked cotton as children with the rest of the family.

"PICKIN' COTTON"