Collection: The Cotton Picking Sack: A Canvas of Suffering, Strength, and Stolen Wealth (7 Foot Canvas Cotton Picking Bags Used by Enslaved Africans in America)

(On Display: Late 1800s 7-foot-long Canvas Cotton Picking Sack)

This is not just a bag. This is a burden stitched by empire. A 7-foot-long canvas cotton sack (slung over Black shoulders, dragging behind sun-scorched bodies) is a relic soaked in pain, perseverance, and stolen Black labor.

As a Black historian, museum curator, revolutionary, and lover of Black people, I offer you this truth: This bag tells the story of America’s rise and our people’s resistance.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, as cotton became king in the South, it was Black hands (enslaved African hands) that planted, nurtured, and picked that wealth out of the soil. But picking was only part of the story. Those hands carried hundreds of pounds of raw cotton in these massive sacks, often dragged across the earth from sunup to sundown.

Imagine it: a child of 10, a woman nursing a baby at night, a man with scars across his back: all measured by the weight they could carry in these bags. A quota of 200 pounds or more. Failure meant punishment. Success meant survival. And no matter how much they picked, they never picked freedom.

These bags were more than tools: they were instruments of economic violence, designed to push the limits of Black labor. They symbolized an economy that turned human beings into machines. But they also reflect our people’s resilience. Black folks carried the weight of this nation (literally) and still found ways to sing, resist, pray, plot, escape and survive.

And let us not forget: this cotton built Wall Street, fed the textile mills of the North and Europe, and financed the very institutions that would later deny Black people access to education, land, and dignity.

This bag is America’s ORIGINAL SIN on display.

“These sacks carried cotton, yes, but they also carried the dreams of the enslaved, the weight of white supremacy, and the indestructible will of Black survival. We honor our ancestors not just for what they endured, but for refusing to be broken by it.”

- Dr. Tracy P. Washington (Curator, United Crowns Mobile Museum of Black History & Culture)