No Longer Yours: Aspects of Slavery and Freedom Seeking in North CarolinaMain MenuCreative Commons LicensePreface and AcknowledgementsArcOnline Maps and ArcStory MapsAdditional Project ComponentsIntroductionEarthWoodFireWaterWindEscapingNetwork to Freedom Underground Railroad LocationsMaps and Additional ResourcesResourcesBrian Robinson351175f8b63e375b96b75c26edde5534c94e8162Torren Gatson9cd3f098d43ed240801c35d1d0fd0737b5602944Rhonda Jones4c7a2610c10c17f5b487bcebc8abbbf64c221aa6Arwin Smallwood329b2d587e93ceaac77a3b3e316b5ce377128ac0Self-Publish
Cotton Gathering
12021-12-01T18:27:54+00:00Brian Robinson351175f8b63e375b96b75c26edde5534c94e816231Picking Cotton, U.S. South, 1873-74plain2021-12-01T18:27:54+00:00Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, Mississippi-Fahrten [Travels on the lower Mississippi, 1879-1880] (Leipzig, 1881). (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library)Brian Robinson351175f8b63e375b96b75c26edde5534c94e8162
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12021-12-01T18:27:53+00:00Earth- General Labor1plain2021-12-01T18:27:53+00:00One should not forget the main reason Africans and American Natives faced the plight of slavery—it was due to the need for labor. This is the basis of slavery. Race became synonymous with servitude labor, permanence, and chattel after a short time in the saga of the Euro-American experience. If there is one thing researchers and scholars know about the general experience of slavery, enslaved people engaged in labor in various capacities. Movies often depict enslaved labor in cotton fields more than any other task. Such illustration is not false, as many enslaved persons worked cotton fields; however, such a depiction is limited and distorted in a non-illuminating way, the amount, variety, and the importance of labor that enslaved persons were forced and expected to do. Enslaved people labored in nearly every task one could imagine. Enslaved people were the driving force of the southern economy and the wealth builder of Northern and international economies.
A focus on king cotton overlooks the differing jobs of enslaved people and, therefore, prevents a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of slavery. It diminishes how enslaved people worked varying and several tasks and the skill required to complete those tasks. It dismisses how enslaved people worked in all seasons, and not only during growing seasons. They worked in the late fall and winter months. Thus, they worked in all weathers—the blistering cold and freezing rain to the hot and humid days of July. In short, it is important to note that enslaved persons worked beyond agriculture. This section will peek into the labor in which the enslaved people engaged beyond agricultural tasks.
Enslaved people in North Carolina not only cultivated that which grew from the soil of the earth but extracted that which grew from within the earth.