BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY:THE GHOST OF LIFE ON A SOUTHERN PLANTATION:

In the late 18th century the slaves of the South fueled an economic engine based on tobacco, years of over planting and the subsequent depletion of the soils nutrients and thus the tobacco fields were becoming less productive and profitable. In 1792 Eli Whitney a Northerner changed all this in 1792 when he invented the Cotton Gin. With this a slave could produce up to 1000 pounds of cotton per day. By 1850 the south was exporting over one million tons of cotton annually to the hungry mills of England. Cotton was king in the south and it increased labor demand and the institution of Slavery. By the beginning of the Civil War over three million slaves tilled the south soil.

Through out the south, the African American (Negroes) as a rule worked much harder than any human being on this planet. The plantation owners treated these people like plodding machine worked them so hard that it was painful to witness. The hoe gangs, they move across the fields in a parallel lines with a considerable degree of precision. When an over seer rode up and down the field, the slaves did not make the smallest change or interruption in the dogged action of their labor, not one of them lift their eye from the ground.