King Cotton | American History through Southern Eyes

American History through Southern Eyes, examining our nations past from a regional perspective. On this episode, examining the centerpiece of the south before the civil war: cotton.
Original Air Date: 2006
Want more history shows? Check out our website at www.gpb.org/television/shows/...

Пікірлер: 131

  • @mechcavandy986
    @mechcavandy986 Жыл бұрын

    I was blessed to have caught the tail end of the Old South. My grandfather and great grandfather did well growing cotton. I lived next door to my grandfather, and he was a big influence on me. He was happiest when he was working in his cotton fields. He was born in 1892. I worked in fields and a cotton gin in the Mississippi Delta in my early life.

  • @NinaRaye_
    @NinaRaye_3 жыл бұрын

    My grandparents and great-grandparents lived on plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Listening to their stories, I was determined to graduate from college become successful.

  • @quortnybillups5281

    @quortnybillups5281

    3 жыл бұрын

    They were probably racist.

  • @amandaking6554

    @amandaking6554

    2 жыл бұрын

    I hope you have found the success I'm sure you've worked very hard for. I know things aren't as easy for some folks as they are for others, especially now.

  • @ellaw356

    @ellaw356

    2 жыл бұрын

    Did you mean to say grandparents? I’m just curious if you are much older? If so, you should record the stories on paper for your grandchildren.

  • @psilocybemusashi

    @psilocybemusashi

    Жыл бұрын

    @@quortnybillups5281 hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

  • @PreacherLevi

    @PreacherLevi

    8 ай бұрын

    @@quortnybillups5281 intelligent and charming response, aren't you a marvel 🙄

  • @gabesegun7966
    @gabesegun79662 жыл бұрын

    It’s truly through the southern eyes

  • @autumnblevins8875
    @autumnblevins88753 жыл бұрын

    when you have to watch this for history class

  • @abno8660

    @abno8660

    3 жыл бұрын

    yep

  • @-KevinX101

    @-KevinX101

    3 жыл бұрын

    Misleading

  • @eliterin8237

    @eliterin8237

    3 жыл бұрын

    so true

  • @eliterin8237

    @eliterin8237

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@-KevinX101you old geezer

  • @geniasmith5791

    @geniasmith5791

    2 жыл бұрын

    Not me.....i luv watching documentaries about all cultures i guess imma closet nerd😉

  • @6688ya
    @6688ya3 жыл бұрын

    15:10 ‐ 16:04 slavery adapting to the times , fast forward into today's slavery is live and well , just because you are getting paid it does not mean you are not enslaved , minimum wage is a joke , prison system is another branch to slavery, and just look who is the minority in prison and who is the majority. It's all systematic

  • @SandfordSmythe

    @SandfordSmythe

    2 жыл бұрын

    Not the same, is it?

  • @robertdipaola3447

    @robertdipaola3447

    2 жыл бұрын

    Derek, really, STOP HATING AMERICA!!!--, MOST OF THE WORLD IS FAR WORSE!!!!--- APPRECIATE WHAT YOU GOT, AND MORE IMPORTANT, WHAT YOU CAN GET!!!!

  • @dorismahoney1440

    @dorismahoney1440

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@robertdipaola3447 we can appreciate and be aware of things that aren't good.

  • @carywest9256

    @carywest9256

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@robertdipaola3447 Never heard of a linthead?

  • @mauricehorton6041

    @mauricehorton6041

    2 жыл бұрын

    SOOOO TRUE BROTHER!✌🏿

  • @Weare30186
    @Weare301862 жыл бұрын

    I enjoyed how with their approach of describing slavery like it was glamorous, and minimized all the free labor that was not discussed. The biggest export was cotton up until the civil war. 3/5 of the world was getting their cotton from the us. Upwards to over estimated 3 billon dollars, and keep in mind that you didn’t pay labor. Once that cotton gin was instituted with how cotton being more readily you need more salves because you were now able to pick/produce more cotton, which generated more income not more wages for those doing all the labor.. seeing all the phots in I guess giving hope to an already human trafficking, mistreating, dehumanizing, as if pictures was that of hope, not survival. History was knowing how many slaves took their lives instead of living in the institution of slavery and don’t get it confused, slavery didn’t end in 1865 the south and reconstruction era after the Lincoln was assassinated in how the south forced the union out, and with the emergence of the KKK slavery, and the fugitive salve act, slavery was back... through Jim Crow and civil rights era, and current mass incarceration era..Through laws in oppressing voting, convict leasing, intimidation, flat out the institution of slavery was wrong no race should have been treated that way.... systematically wrong, period! If you subscribe to the institution of slavery then you are the problem.

  • @mauronava9839
    @mauronava98392 жыл бұрын

    Great documentary, thank you very much!

  • @mrdave5232
    @mrdave52322 жыл бұрын

    Very well done. I enjoyed it .

  • @peggan471
    @peggan4712 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for this video, very informative

  • @andreabennington
    @andreabennington4 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for posting this informative video. I was attempting to show my son just how important cotton as a crop was to the South and how transformative Eli Whitney’s invention was and this video helped tremendously.

  • @karenbartlett1307

    @karenbartlett1307

    2 жыл бұрын

    Cotton was shipped to Northern textile mills to sew cotton clothing and therefore was important to the economy of the entire country.

  • @MzCutiePie1000

    @MzCutiePie1000

    2 жыл бұрын

    That's All You Got out of This??? You're Dumb !!

  • @sistagirllondon

    @sistagirllondon

    Жыл бұрын

    @@karenbartlett1307 a standing ovation on your comment. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

  • @karenbartlett1307

    @karenbartlett1307

    Жыл бұрын

    @@sistagirllondon Well, thanks.

  • @karenbartlett1307

    @karenbartlett1307

    Жыл бұрын

    I feel a compulsion to state the truth, that's all. Slavery was also endemic to the entire US. When the North "freed" their slaves in the early 1800's, the slave owners often waited until the slave was just about the age to grant their freedom,(somewhere around 20, I think), then sold them South. That's where the expression "sold down the River" originated. Also, the Transatlantic Slave Trade originated and was operated from the North Eastern States, most notably Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

  • @karenbartlett1307
    @karenbartlett13072 жыл бұрын

    Cotton was sold to Northern textile mills, and was therefore important to the whole country.

  • @borninvincible

    @borninvincible

    2 жыл бұрын

    Important to white profit. That's it.

  • @matthewsparks8821

    @matthewsparks8821

    Жыл бұрын

    @@borninvincible fueled the war , without the unions economical warfare on the seceded states. People would still be in fucking chains.

  • @bayamonrican

    @bayamonrican

    9 ай бұрын

    Britain and France also benefit from American cotton

  • @TheRachsharp
    @TheRachsharp3 жыл бұрын

    I like showing this to my students in order for them to grasp the intensity of Southerners on cotton and slave labor. I also stress how wrong slavery was and share slave narratives. An economy built off the back of brutality and forced labor on a great people who were kidnapped from their homes to build the south.

  • @karenbartlett1307

    @karenbartlett1307

    2 жыл бұрын

    They were kidnapped by mostly the Dahome Tribe's African king and sold to Europeans. And they were shipped via the Transatlantic Slave Trade by New England slave ships. Slavery was an American institution, not merely Southern.

  • @psilocybemusashi

    @psilocybemusashi

    Жыл бұрын

    don't worry. everything they built general sherman destroyed. mississippi is widely known to be the poorest state in the union today. in the 1860 some of the largest wealthiest plantation owners had set up plantations there. slavery didn't end because of the civil war. it just turned into something that both white and blacks shared in.

  • @morehyeshiahhistorylessons94

    @morehyeshiahhistorylessons94

    10 ай бұрын

    @@karenbartlett1307 Alexander Falconbridge spoke of them kidnapped...

  • @morehyeshiahhistorylessons94

    @morehyeshiahhistorylessons94

    10 ай бұрын

    ​@@karenbartlett1307Portuguese too...Henry the Navigator helped.

  • @bayamonrican

    @bayamonrican

    9 ай бұрын

    ​@karenbartlett1307 Don't forget how the fugitive slave act gave southern human traffickers free liberty to take free black Americans up from up north into the slavery institution. Some of those free black Americans were not even born into slavery. But yet were kidnapped and dragged south to be forced to work on plantations and breed more slaves

  • @eliterin8237
    @eliterin82373 жыл бұрын

    idk how my history teacher likes this

  • @samuelbrown6287
    @samuelbrown62874 жыл бұрын

    It’s kinda messed up how they gloss over slavery like it wasn’t a huge deal

  • @christopherclark8454

    @christopherclark8454

    4 жыл бұрын

    Maybe in the future it wont matter anymore

  • @samuelbrown6287

    @samuelbrown6287

    4 жыл бұрын

    Christopher Clark are you saying you think it shouldn’t matter anymore?

  • @jetstream222

    @jetstream222

    4 жыл бұрын

    Christopher Clark Historical events influence more of the future than you’re likely aware of. So many of our current problems are cyclical at closer inspection. The invention of “sub-races” and its associated prejudices are indelible impacts on the human race. The less the past matters, the closer we are to repeating it in the future.

  • @derrellgibbs3795

    @derrellgibbs3795

    4 жыл бұрын

    jetstream222 how ignorant

  • @simplyhuman3982

    @simplyhuman3982

    4 жыл бұрын

    Of course it was a huge deal. I believe that would have changed regardless of that supposedly (civil war). Lincoln didn't even abolish it in the north until after the war was over. It's all politics. They don't actually care unfortunately. If so, they wouldn't have stopped there. It would be abolished world wide. And it isn't.

  • @josephherrmann6304
    @josephherrmann63045 ай бұрын

    If you drive around the south you can see a lot of old cotton gins and cotton warehouses still standing from the early 1900's onward.

  • @keithnunes6357
    @keithnunes63574 жыл бұрын

    Thanks i have too make a paper about the history of business in America

  • @chrischalk9525

    @chrischalk9525

    3 жыл бұрын

    So do i

  • @morehyeshiahhistorylessons94
    @morehyeshiahhistorylessons9410 ай бұрын

    Glad they mentioned 1- slavery 2- England

  • @ORTEZW
    @ORTEZW3 жыл бұрын

    But at the end of the season the white share cropper will tell the black share cropper. That he made no profit therefore he worked for free that after expenses are paying the black former food and other things that were needed that when all the work was done end of the year there was no profit slavery by another name as well

  • @wandasanders4193

    @wandasanders4193

    3 жыл бұрын

    Absolutely. White share croppers were extremely poor.

  • @drew7155

    @drew7155

    2 жыл бұрын

    Ar least they were free to leave tho

  • @ORTEZW

    @ORTEZW

    2 жыл бұрын

    After the civil war they were also free to leave with nothing. But the tactic is this after leaving the sharecropper was simply say that you owed him money and had to work that debt off so you were not free to leave the whole situation was a catch 22. This is where your black laws also came in if you were stopped and did not have a job or any paper stating you worked out of specific place you were arrested for vagrancy in prison and loaned out possibly to the same sharecropper or other industries. Fannie Lou hamer left but her family stayed in order not to incur that or to pay off any debt owed due to the process mentioned above. But she had to leave simply because she wanted to register to vote. There is no freedom in that

  • @maggiemae7539

    @maggiemae7539

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@ORTEZW this just did not happen to black folks. Yes Jim Crowe laws came first but many poor white people went to debtor prisons.

  • @ORTEZW

    @ORTEZW

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@maggiemae7539 What are you talking about. This is more than an issue of debtors Court. Black Freedman were arrested simply for not having papers stating they were working and caught up in sharecropping this is not Dennis Court they just were not paid and cheated out of their labor slavery by another name read the book. And the part about white people regardless to how poor they were they always had an opportunity to work their way up we did not The history of Birmingham Alabama sloss furnace as well as the minds. As well as so many other places in America. This was not Dennis Court this was simply imprisonment and forced free labor. This lasted in some places up until the sixties. Debtors Court lol

  • @rhondawilcox9244
    @rhondawilcox92442 жыл бұрын

    Back in the day my family pick it my older ones hands would hurt there where 11 of us

  • @sammyc7565
    @sammyc75653 жыл бұрын

    “Furnished the seed”. Lol

  • @texasaggie8449
    @texasaggie84492 жыл бұрын

    In Texas cotton was king. We still have the cotton bowl in Dallas. 👍🏻

  • @jeffersondavis2530

    @jeffersondavis2530

    2 жыл бұрын

    Hey Aggie ! I spent 5 years of my youth in Bryan from 1959 on. Out by the airport with cotton growing about 150 yards behind the house.

  • @avenaoat
    @avenaoat Жыл бұрын

    Cotton was bought by the British from the Turkish Empire in the XVIII Century. After the cotton gin the North American cotton became CHEAPER for the British! So the cheaper cotton was engin for the textile branch of the industrial revolution.

  • @daphnerodriguez9980
    @daphnerodriguez99803 жыл бұрын

    WOW! ❤️🖤💚🤎 FAMILY DAPHNE COTTON ALWAYS 💜,

  • @stevenmcgillivray9283
    @stevenmcgillivray9283 Жыл бұрын

    Elvis's favourite bacon, was called King Cotton.

  • @bsanchez3563
    @bsanchez35634 ай бұрын

    You know what I just realized..., rice papers gonna melt an dissolve in the mere rain.. so fwiw that currency would nevervhave been worth it from the GETGO lol thatd be a fun mess to have on ones hands if they were just even outside if during the rainy season... lols trynna not be soaked.

  • @shravankarthikrajarajan5039
    @shravankarthikrajarajan50392 жыл бұрын

    Bro its 2019 what's wrong posting a 1080p video

  • @selecttravelvacations7472

    @selecttravelvacations7472

    7 ай бұрын

    2006 video production.

  • @amymijangos5278
    @amymijangos52783 жыл бұрын

    i have to watch this for history class. i hate it here

  • @jefferyfowler7860
    @jefferyfowler78602 жыл бұрын

    South had the cotton and the North wanted it if not they would have never stolen land from poor families after the war. Cotton was that powerful.

  • @johngroll9186
    @johngroll9186Ай бұрын

    Without queen Soybeans, King Cotton dies because of the birth of George Washington Carver a slave we were able to keep cotton as King along with queen Soybean and prince peanut.

  • @thatgurlyana8964
    @thatgurlyana89643 жыл бұрын

    Do y’all know some facts bout cotton or how much they’ve picked

  • @amerjoud6527

    @amerjoud6527

    3 жыл бұрын

    It is picked by the cotton gin. It is discussed in the video. You should watch it

  • @sammyc7565
    @sammyc75653 жыл бұрын

    Thank God for the cotton gin!

  • @gamegod2262
    @gamegod22622 жыл бұрын

    Slavery has never ended

  • @jackcusick2796
    @jackcusick27964 жыл бұрын

    "That's why so many slaves were necessary before the civil war" that is crazy that someone can say that today

  • @nicholasmaximus3412

    @nicholasmaximus3412

    4 жыл бұрын

    How?

  • @victordonavon292

    @victordonavon292

    4 жыл бұрын

    He said necessary for the cotton industry. Don't quote, if you can't even be bothered to quote things correctly.

  • @hazelstraub7478

    @hazelstraub7478

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@nicholasmaximus3412 in p

  • @gregroberts5303

    @gregroberts5303

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@victordonavon292 I'll take your word on the exact quote because I don't want to back and search for it, but with that said, what difference is made by the use of the words "cotton industry"?

  • @llltrac9143

    @llltrac9143

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@victordonavon292 These idiots like to quoted shit out of context.

  • @dennistaylor9795
    @dennistaylor97953 жыл бұрын

    This is one reason.and only one.there are a lot more reasons blacks should be paid reparations.cotton was king for the united states a lot of money was made.off of free labor.

  • @mustafahaley8464

    @mustafahaley8464

    2 жыл бұрын

    @Jim Della Vecchia , mann

  • @carolynetter8046
    @carolynetter80463 жыл бұрын

    It was likely not so much that cotton was king as heroin and rum were king that was entering the U.S. from Cuba and South America by way of the Southern coastal states and distributed as far as Canada. It is the same situation nowadays with drugs and why the border state of Texas produces the most cotton and yet most likely drugs is KING entering Texas from the Mexico border. But also people are fooled when they are told that cotton needs a dry climate and so the draught conditions deliberately created by build up of bacteria and germs in the refusal of the community sanitation department to sanitize streets and dumpsters with cleaning products causes numerous life threatening illnesses therefore making hospitals and the medical industry KING in cotton communities. If people want a healthier community to live in then move away from the Southern States that have so much cotton and medical centers.

  • @businessbuilder92

    @businessbuilder92

    2 жыл бұрын

    And go where to the pollution capitol new york

  • @Metamorphosis2024
    @Metamorphosis20244 жыл бұрын

    Designated racist regime....

  • @blown572hemi
    @blown572hemi2 жыл бұрын

    Hemp was king until government got bought

  • @BanjoInKorea
    @BanjoInKorea2 жыл бұрын

    Boring. A doco about King Cotton with no black voices or perspectives. Oh my.

  • @erikaalicea2008
    @erikaalicea20083 жыл бұрын

    Cotton build wealth. How about giving that wealth back to the slave's descendants.

  • @davec1615

    @davec1615

    3 жыл бұрын

    trillions of dollars have been transfered to blacks from whites in the form of welfare... used your EBT card lately?

  • @wandasanders4193

    @wandasanders4193

    3 жыл бұрын

    To white share croppers too they were extremely poor.

  • @erikaalicea2008

    @erikaalicea2008

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@davec1615 In Brushton, New York, 30 people were caught committing welfare fraud. Wanna guess what “race” they were? White!!! How about the food stamp millionaire from Ohio another white guy caught committing welfare fraud while living in a mansion. And lastly in 2016 Donald Trump a millionaire payed $750 in taxes. (But that’s not stealing right?) The poor and middle class pay more taxes than the 1%. So who’s giving who what?

  • @erikaalicea2008

    @erikaalicea2008

    2 жыл бұрын

    @Pack Action exactly. White peoples also ask the government for money and again pay less taxes.(not all white people) just like not all black and brown get welfare.

  • @drewhendley

    @drewhendley

    2 жыл бұрын

    Slaves got freedom that’s enough