Last updated: September 20, 2024
Place
Farming Transitions
Christy Hoover
Quick Facts
Location:
Natchez, LA
Amenities
1 listed
Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits
From antiquity, farming was done by people with basic tools. Mules and other animals provided more power. From the 1700s to the mid 1900s, the use of workers, enslaved then sharecropper, allowed the growing of labor-intensive crops.
The end of the plantation era was caused, not by the Civil War, but by the transition from working by hand or with animals to using machinery. The mechanization of agriculture in the 20th century changed how crops were planted and harvested.
Mechanical cotton pickers replaced large numbers of farmworkers. Between 1910 and 1970, six million African Americans moved out of the rural South in the Great Migration partly because of the loss of farm jobs.
Cotton bolls do not all open at the same time, so the mechanical pickers were sent in when the most cotton was open. Atrice Anthony is shown handpicking early cotton circa 1963 on Magnolia Plantation.
The end of the plantation era was caused, not by the Civil War, but by the transition from working by hand or with animals to using machinery. The mechanization of agriculture in the 20th century changed how crops were planted and harvested.
Mechanical cotton pickers replaced large numbers of farmworkers. Between 1910 and 1970, six million African Americans moved out of the rural South in the Great Migration partly because of the loss of farm jobs.
Cotton bolls do not all open at the same time, so the mechanical pickers were sent in when the most cotton was open. Atrice Anthony is shown handpicking early cotton circa 1963 on Magnolia Plantation.