Cotton Picking Time Down South

[wise50fifth]

What does cotton picking have to do with black gang members of Chicago? Youtube is racis- i meant weird. I still can not figure out how these two relate to each other.

[dayajotnirmal]

and its soft...:) i luv cotton

[haditabonita666]

imagine what slaves went through in all those cotton picking days, i cant even begin to

[FloralCotton]

Very Cool Video! If you, or any of your readers are looking for cleaned, whole, cotton bolls for floral arrangements or crafs, check us out!

Floral Cotton

floralcotton(dot)com

[austbot]

I got two cotton seeds in school last year, my teacher said that they would be to old to grow.I planted both seeds in april, one grew the other didnt. I live down in georgia, and the cotton i planted, would have grown bigger than it did (only had 8 bowls) but it kinda got crowded out by some tomato plants. Weve picked 4 bowls already, and have 107 seeds and still have to pick 4 more bowls. Cant wait to plant it next year :D.

[LowLowSpinners]

hey i can sell you a nigger slave to work on your cotton field for free, he's a bit fat but the sun would do him well.

[twanslice92]

@LowLowSpinners you racist pig!!! Shame on you!

[ebedgood]

Showed it my kids, age 4, and and age 5, to learn about where their clothes come from, and what "fabric" is. Now they are expecting some cotton angel to bring them bales of clothing. Sigh...

[stints27]

"hand labor"= black people

[mamacornettesmoney]

@stints27 Wasn't just black people. There were countless whites picking it, too.

[KlaykidReal]

It's a strange feeling passing the cotton plantations here in Texas. The white heads make th fields look like they're covered in snow.

[wilty57]

Sucks to be a nigga luckily i aint black XD

[kd5hms63]

I grew up on a large plantation called Pickens, named after R.A. Pickens. This large farm in about eighteen thousand acres of rich alluvial sandy soil that was perfect for growing that 'white gold'..cotton! I chopped cotton, too young to have hand picked cotton such as my parents did in Sherrill, Arkansas during the fifties on the sharecropper land. They would pick cotton and stuff a long burlap white sack nearly nine feet long until it was full. It was 'weighed up' and poured in the

wagon.

[starwarslego981]

are you migrant?

[qpwillie]

@TheOneDayWonder

LOL! The idea that only black people picked cotton is another one of those lies that liberals came up with.

[dragonofthesun]

I learned that in school

[pentail]

As a little kid in southwestern oklahoma all our family would meet at the farm the woman would kill chickens and make lunch an dinner but all the kids and men picked cotton. I guess you could say it was our family reunion we even had kin come in from as far away as colorado. I miss the family get togethers don't see any of those people anymore but i sure don't miss picking cotton

[messabout1]

Family gatherings . .fun, cotton picking.... not

[mrrktexas]

Picking cotton in Arkasas during the 1940's and 50's was good motivation to get an education. However, it wasn't all bad. Saturday night in the cotton towns during picking time was great fun. The population of our little town would increase from about 700 to over 5,000 on Saturday nights with carnivals and lots of other fun things ...until all the cotton was picked. HillBillies and Mexicans would mix with the locals every Saturday for a fun time that would end about the first of November.

[rasero27]

I just finished reading A Painted House... your comment is pretty much what the book is about. Really good book, by the way, by John Grisham.

[hagirl62]

Thanks, I never really knew about cotton cause I live in the North. We dont have things like that. I bet you have alot of Qtips on hand? amazing video.

[messabout1]

I'm glad you now know about cotton. No cotton will not grow well in colder climes because it loves the hot weather of the South.

Cotton is planted in the Spring and picked in the Fall. Yes there is plenty of cotton available foe many uses. My favorite is 100% cotton clothes. Nothing feels as good as cotton on a hot sweltering deep South day.

[fictionista6]

I came across your video while researching cotton picking (circa 1960) for a book I'm working on. Would very much like to hear more of your memories of picking cotton by hand and also to hear from anyone else with similar memories.

[messabout1]

Yes, my cotton picking years were in the 1950's up until about 1960. Mechanical pickers soon ended hand picking in most of the South.

People a bit older than me would be a good source of hand cotton picking information for many of them spent their adult lives in the cotton and corn fields doing manual work.

[ellaloves2praise]

@fictionista6 I grew up in the South in the 50's and until I graduated high school in the early 60's. We picked cotton by hand, as we were "share croppers". To me it was pure slavery. We shopped cotton all day for $2.50 and picked for, I think $3.00 per hundred pounds. I hated that way of life, and today I don't like the South. We were slaves to a system that didn't profit us no matter how hard we worked.

[SoCalJinx]

I just drove through Arizona & stopped to take a close look at some cotton growing in a field and I became curious about cotton production. I found this video to be very interesting and informative.

[messabout1]

Youtube can be very educational. A great service to many. thanks for making it one of your favorites.

[fictionista6]

I've read that kids were sometimes taken out of school to pick cotton, I personally remember that it was very hot and backbreaking work--we were given milk cartons of water to drink. Were there any sort of laws, restrictions on the kids working? Or on the conditions people worked under?

[american37]

There were no restrictions on kids working or on the conditions they worked under. Where I grew up, in the Missouri Bootheel, students had two summer "vacations": an early one for chopping cotton, and a later one for picking cotton. Everybody picked cotton, everybody worked. It was necessary for a family to survive. Except for rich kids, a long idol adolescence is a new thing in the world. And, even now, this new thing mostly exists only in first world countries.

[gumleyboy]

Interesting video. If you can, a short video of how it is harvested these days would be good.

[messabout1]

Yes, I will try to get a shot of that as it is going on at this time of year.

[DEEPTHROAT36]

Where can i buy cotton straight from the field?

[messabout1]

Any cotton farmer would be glad to sell you all you want. Do you want it by the stalk or just cotton bowls? I can possibly connect you with a source

[DEEPTHROAT36]

By the stalk!!! Any Information you can give me would be Great... Thanks

[susangm]

I was just going to ask Richard the same thing. I've lived down here awhile, but I have yet to see exactly how the whole process is done. I see the big bales in the field after it's been harvested, but I sure would like to see, in detail, how it's done.

[hippyhillbilly]

Cotton didn't do as well this year as last year, not enuff rain. Mama and Dad picked a lot of cotton when they were kids by hand. Playin' catch up Richard been gone this weekend. This is the first one of yours I could comment on, the Chruch vid was awesome and the motorcycle to Peter was too ;) Got about 70 vids to watch ;) Peace & Health to you and yours sir

[messabout1]

Noticed you were not on the past few days but you will have fun catching up

[bunnytrix]

Very interesting video. Thanks.

[messabout1]

thank you for viewing

[smithysrat]

Your videos are interesting and informative. This video made me remember when we read "To kill a mockingbird" at school, you can almost picture how it used to be. Luckily times have changed.

[messabout1]

Glad they hold your interest Smithy. "To kill A Mockingbird" got its inspiration fron an occurence that happened here in my hometown.

[messabout1]

We really were taught as kids, "It's a sin to kill a mockingbird", so we were very careful to never harm one.

[Marihani]

I've never seen cotton close up before. Thanks!

[messabout1]

I had that thought, when filming, that others might not have seen cotton like this before.

[positivesue]

Your videos are often very educational, thank you.

[krajikevin]

wow, what a sight./

[messabout1]

The video does not do the scene justice. In person the white field looks like a covering of snow.

[messabout1]

images like that tend to keep one humble :-)

[hmarty]

Hope you can get that off. :) I know your porch is looking awesome.

[hmarty]

<giggle> I know how that goes. I still can't get the image of you out of my mind all swelled up thinkin you were a celeb and you had burrito in your beard. <smile>

[messabout1]

Notice in the views showing the four cotton locks. I have white stain around my finger nails from staining on my back screened porch that morning

[hmarty]

When I was a little biddy baby my mama would rock me in the cradle in them old cotton fields back home. Great vid Richard!

[messabout1]

I can remember riding on my Mama's cotton pick sack when I was too little to pick myself.

[hmarty]

Well I was singing the lyrics of a song! :) And then, "I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, look away, look away . . ."

[messabout1]

Yeh I knew the song, but that is the way my old mind works, one thing leads to another with me.

[geezerart]

Cotton is amazing! That was a nice video. Thanks!

[messabout1]

Much of our valley land still grows cotton yearly.