Cotton gin on plantation near Memphis, TN, circa 1930

About this postcard

African American workers load loose cotton onto horse-drawn wagons beside a cotton gin near Memphis, Tennessee. A large pile of picked cotton sits in the foreground, waiting to be fed into the gin, where seed is separated from fiber before the crop is baled for market. Memphis was a major cotton market on the Mississippi River, and the surrounding plantation country depended on Black tenant farmers and wage laborers to grow and harvest the crop. Gins like this one stood at the center of that economy, turning raw cotton into a saleable staple.