Cotton Farmers, Marietta, Georgia, c. 1880
Before the Civil War, the South had proudly called itself the “Cotton Kingdom.” After the war, cotton was still king, but few southerners got rich on cotton profits. Instead, thousands of small-scale farmers, white and black, struggled with plunging crop prices, debt, and taxes on land to support an array of ambitious Reconstruction programs. The farmers here have baled their cotton for market and pose with their wagons in Marietta’s courthouse square. Courtesy Georgia Vanishing Archives Collection, cob262.