Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field

 

Usually when you hear someone say they used to pick cotton, you either think they were a slave or had a negative experience with the task. That was not the case with Lillie Gayle Smith as she recounts her experience of picking cotton on her aunt's farm during the summer. Smith took a graduate class called "Black Women's Literacy" which helped her to appreciate the values and teachings that she learned from being on the cotton field. The class helped her to recapture her literacy and to draw from past experiences that helped to shape her literacy as well. By doing this, she began to think deeply about her time on the cotton field. She made comparisons as to how black women were expected to be in the field alongside their men doing the same back-breaking work. This was added fuel to the independence, self-reliance, and survival skills that have defined the black woman. She later talks of how black women exude a certain confidence that women of other ethnicities do not. black women do not face the same self-esteem issues as women of the other races do for they have acquired a certain appreciation that the others have not. Besides this, there were many values that she learned on that cotton field that have helped shaped her into the woman that she is today. As she was picking cotton, she earned wages that she saved and budgeted for things such as clothes and books for school. Smith also learned of the strength and wisdom of the elders that she worked alongside. Their work may have been "degrading" but there was certain pride in it as they helped the younger workers and sang songs to help pass the time. She gained an understanding of their story and a bond that drew her closer to these people who she later viewed as her family. 

The essay was very good as it helped to give you an appreciation of being on a cotton field. Very few people understand the job other than standing in the hot sun and picking cotton in a crowded field. The people are more than workers. They are a family. They share the same work and many share the same experiences as well. They also guide the younger workers and provide a wisdom that cannot be matched in any other way. 

One of the experiences, this nation would rather forget, although it continues to haunt America today, is the immoral institution of slavery, Black Africans were brought to this nation sometimes for the express purpose of picking cotton. Arguably no job in the annals of American history has rested lower on the menial-labor ladder than that of picking cotton. Drudgery and back breaking are two words always associated with it, and the dominant picture in many minds remains one of Black slaves laboring in plantaion fields from sunup to sundown.

The one experience that America would love to erase from its history is the "immoral institution of slavery." No job has been lower on the todem pole than picking cotton. "Drudgery and back breaking" are mostly associated with the task. The most vivid picture that comes to mind is the black slaves working in the plantations from dusk to dawn (Smith 41). 

Smith, Lillie Gayle."Unearthing Hidden Literacy:Seven Lessons I learned in a Cotton Field." Readers of the Quilt: Essays on Being Black, Female, and Literate. Ed: JoAnne Kilgour Dowdy.  Cresskill, New Jersey:Hampton Press, Inc, 2005. 41. Print