Cotton
Chronicles
By Mary Anne Jusko
2010 Memphis
Experiential Learning Trip
Abstract
Cotton
is an important multi-billion dollar industry in the United States and the
world. It has had a profound affect on
the growth and development of the country, its economy, and its people. Harvesting the cotton has evolved from hand
picking by slaves, sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and eventually by machinery.
The way cotton was harvested, gotten to market, sold, and transported had a
great effect on individual lives.
Cotton
Chronicles is a one to three day lesson focusing on number nine in Setting the
Purpose, and the third essential question: In what ways did harvesting cotton
affect peoples’ daily lives?
Analysis of Primary
Documents
Cotton
Chronicles entails analyzing the documents of a white sharecropper (journal
page), a black laborer (picture), a black poet/songwriter/labor union advocate
(audio poem), and a white author sharing memories and pictures of Alabama (blog
page).
Essential
Questions/Enduring Understandings
·
In
what ways is the cotton industry important in the United States?
·
How
has the process of harvesting cotton changed over the centuries?
·
In what ways did harvesting cotton affect peoples’ daily
lives?
Assessment
In
this lesson, students will be assessed in two ways. First, students will be assessed based on the
completion of a photo, audio, or document analysis sheet. Second, students will be assessed based on
the quality of a written essay or diary entry.
Setting the Purpose
Activate
prior student knowledge by brainstorming with students what they know about
cotton, how it is grown and harvested, and how it is used. If students read the labels on their
clothing, their hats, their bookbags, their jeans,
etc., they will notice that many fabrics worn and used today are made from
cotton.
Possible
questions:
1.
What
do you know about the history of cotton? (timeline)
2.
Where
is cotton grown? (what states, based on climate, soil)
3.
What
do you know about the cotton plant?
o
Life
cycle
o
Plant
parts
o
Cotton
fiber
o
Cotton
lint
o
Cottonseed
o
Genetically
engineered cotton (biotechnology applications)
4.
How
is cotton harvested? (both past and present, who
harvested cotton?)
5.
How
is cotton processed?
6.
Economic
Importance of Cotton? How is cotton sold and traded (Memphis Cotton Exchange,
transported first by mules and wagons, steamboat, then train, exported where?)
7.
What
products are made from cotton?
8.
Inventions involved in aiding cotton
production, harvesting, and making textiles
9.
Consider the daily
lives of people involved in the cotton industry. In what ways were people’s lives affected.
Activity One
1.
Read
Journal Entry about Barbara Hawkins of Senath, MO
·
PDF
Sharecropper Hawkins-Senath, MO
·
JPG
Picking Cotton-taken at Cotton Museum
2. Write
a journal entry for one or two days about the life of a sharecropper. Students
can imagine they are Barbara, or a friend of Barbara’s, and write a detailed
account of the day. Include facts, as well as feelings. Illustrate.
Activity Two
http://www.deltarevisited.com/about_us
from: THE DELTA REVISITED: REFLECTIONS FROM
A SON OF THE SOUTH
click on Chapter One, When Cotton was King
1.
Read
passage of Larry Burchfield’s memories of seeing cotton being picked by hand in
the fields of Arkansas.
2.
Talk
with a partner to share your thoughts about what Mr. Burchfield observed.
3.
Click
on the pictures below his writing to view his picture slideshow. Then summarize what you have learned by writing
an expository essay on how harvesting cotton has changed from hand picking to
the use of machinery. Describe some of
the machinery now used to harvest crops.
4.
Draw
a picture of one of the tractors. Color.
Activity Three
1.
Listen
to poem “A Planter and a Sharecropper” by John Handcox
2.
Fill
out Sound Recording Analysis Worksheet
3.
Share
results with a partner or with class.
ActivityFour:
Read John Handcox’s biography. Write a brief
summary of John Handcox’s life, including a timeline. Include how the cotton industry and sharecropping
affected his life, and how he helped others.
Activity Five
Analyze
the photo “Laborers Waiting to Pick Cotton”.
Fill out a photo analysis worksheet
Talk
with a partner about your observations, or share with the class.
