Mechanical Cotton Picker Displaces 2 Million Black Agricultural Workers

The mechanization of Southern agriculture during the 1930s, accelerated by New Deal AAA payments to reduce acreage, began displacing Black agricultural workers at scale. International Harvester's mechanical cotton picker, demonstrated in 1936 and commercially available by 1941, could do the work of 50 pickers. Planters who received AAA payments for reducing cotton acreage used the funds to purchase machinery and evict sharecroppers rather than share the benefits. The displacement of 2 million Black agricultural workers between 1930 and 1960 drove the Second Great Migration but into Northern cities with redlined housing and exclusionary unions.