It is the time of year in Mississippi where, at some unsuspected turn in the road, the landscape turns a bright white.
It’s cotton pickin’ time in Mississippi, to borrow a line from an old Jimmie Rogers song.
Cotton is to Mississippi what peaches are to Georgia, apples are to Washington and corn is to Iowa. We associate the crop with the state.
But Mississippi’s identification goes far beyond that. In some respect, cotton is a metaphor for our state, a reminder of its history, good and bad, and, of course, a key component of the state’s agricultural economy.
A while back, the U.S. cotton manufacturers built an advertising campaign on the slogan “Cotton: The fabric of our lives.”
That’s more than a slogan in Mississippi.
Cotton made Mississippi and its legacy continues to echo through the present day.
From 1817, the year Mississippi became a state, until 1860, the year the Civil War commenced, no place on earth produced more cotton and, consequently, no place of earth produced more millionaires per capita. Planters grew rich and powerful on the back of slave labor. Our pride was also our shame and when the Civil War ended, our state’s history tells a tale of stubborn defiance.
Power and wealth are not easily relinquished by those who hold them. They would not give up cotton, nor the racist practices that supported it. They turned then to engage in what has accurately been described as slavery by another name. The era of the tenant farmer or sharecropper was born and persisted deep into the 20th century. The painful residue of more than a century of cotton-based feudalism remains, and we struggle yet to achieve the elusive goal of racial equality.
In 1920s and 1930s, if cotton was king, it was a monarch of the cruelest sort. Communities suffered from an economy based of 5-cent cotton. There was no money for schools and roads or anything hopeful.
Cotton is no longer king, at least not in Mississippi. In 1930, cotton acreage in the state was 4.1 million acres. Today, that number is 420,000 acres. Texas, will more than 5 million acres in cotton, is the undisputed king.
No, cotton is not king here. That distinction now belongs to soybeans, which accounts for 2.1 million acres. Heck, cotton isn’t even queen. Since 2007, that distinction belong to corn, at 750,000 acres. Cotton is a distant third.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen, you could say.
Even so, there is something about seeing a field shining white with cotton that strikes a chord deep within us.
A field of soybeans evokes no reaction, nor are we tempted to stop along a cornfield and survey the scene.
Only cotton does that. It reminds us at once of all the glory and shame, the power and poverty that tell the full story of cotton in Mississippi.
It’s complicated, as the saying goes.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.