FWIW, many white southerners picked cotton, before and after the Emancipation. Billionaire Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty has described picking cotton as a teenager so he could go to college. The renowned Southern writer Rick Bragg has told of being dragged around the cotton fields on a sack as a baby while his mother picked cotton to make ends meet.
My wife’s grandmother had a good-sized farm in SC. I remember seeing cotton, corn, tomatoes...all picked/harvested by the extended (Caucasian) family. Tough job. One of her uncles used to “convert” pigs to bacon, sausage, etc. The sausage and bacon were sold out before the pigs were even slaughtered. Good stuff on a hot biscuit.
I think it’s a housing development now.