Picking Cotton: Part 1 of 2

“Cotton pickin” (No offense).
What does this expression mean to you? Is it foul language? Is it racially motivated?


Well, I haven’t the time or desire to babble about Lou Dobbs’ slip up the other day. I don’t want to talk about race. Let’s talk about the business of picking cotton, and let’s talk about justice.

I want to share with you an “American Negro Ballad” (not ballad in the sense of a slow song, but ballad in the sense of poetry). I came across it for the first time in one of my daughter’s literature text books. The book was published in 1963, hence the term “negro” is used.

According to James Miller’s The Origins of the Mississippi Delta Blues, these “American negro ballads” are said to have

“…romanticized certain aspects of cultural ideology and were drawn from courtier style, European poetry... Other ballads took historical or social inspiration and meshed them into song. One of the most famous of these was The Boll Weevil.”

While surfing for pictures of the weevil and accounts of cotton picking, I came across some interesting blogposts.

One sort of romanticized it from the perspective of a sharecropper in the mid 1950s. It was an honest way to make a living and something of a social gathering.

The other post made a statement that I suppose Lou Dobbs would chime in on, that while yesterday’s “negroes” provided free labour by picking cotton, today Black kids can pick cotton as part of a science class excursion, alongside white kids.

That’s true, but read this excerpt from Robert Weathersby’s WPA slave narrative and you’ll know what perspective I had in mind when I read the ballad of the boll weevil.

"De fiel' wuk was done from sun to sun. De fiel' hands went out early in de mornings after de horn had blowed an' dey had all et breakfas' at Marse's house. When dey reached de fiels dey went to plowing, strowing fertlize, planting an' hoeing. At twelve o'clock a cowhorn was blowed an' dey would go in to dinner, den dey would go back an' wuk till nite. In gethering time fiels full ob 'em would cut rake, bind an' stack. Wagons would be coming an' gwine stacked high wid grain an' stuff dey had growed. Acres an' acres o' snowy white cotton would be dotted here an' deir wid bunches o' slaves a picking cotton wid deir long sacks dragging from deir sholdiers. De darkies had a big time a singing, shouting, an' hollering Scary ghos' tales would be tole an' tales o hoo-doo an' all kinds o' superstion dat de darkies believed in. Dey believed in all kinds o' signs an' stuff lak dat. De Overseers was alwas' close by to see dat de wuk was kept a gwine. When nite come on dey took out, et supper an' den hit de hay (to bed, a negro saying as their beds were of hay) dead tired.

When I read the ballad of the boll weevil, I didn’t think about sharecropping at all. I didn’t’ think about a rainbow of kids on a modern day science trip. I thought about folks who picked cotton by force. I thought about folks who used words and music to survive in the cruel world they were born into. I thought about the folks I’m proud to call my ancestors because of their emotional and spiritual strength.



Now that I’ve said all that, I’m too tired to type out the whole ballad!


So for now, here’s the first stanza:

Oh, de boll weevil am a little black bug,
Come from Mexico, dey say.
Come all de way to Texas,
Jus‘ a-lookin’ for a place to stay,
Jus’ a-lookin’ for a home, jus’ a-lookin’ for a home,