Mexican Migrants: 1939

I am continually dismayed (a polite term) by the doubters and naysayers which persistently plague the good folks at Shorpy. Don't these chuckleheads realize that Dave, Ken & company know what they're about?

Be that as it may, when I saw this post, I thought "they must mean Port Neches," but a look here (3rd photo down) convinced me that I had it right the first time.

Don't these chuckleheads (me included) know ....

Cotton farmers in the Mississippi Delta increasingly turned to contract labor as the old system of sharecropping was being dismantled. Starting after WWl, African Americans emigrated to jobs in the northern and western cities in an effort to make a better life for themselves and their families. By the 1930s mechanization was becoming an important force on the farms, with early cotton picking machines being tested and deployed to the fields. The machines triumphed over hand labor in the 40s and early 50s.

This photo was taken at the end of the cotton picking season in October of 1939. There are a number of FSA photos taken by Marion Post Wolcott at Hopson Plantation in Clarksdale, Mississippi that have Mexican labor. Also FSA photos at Perthshire, Mississippi, show Mexicans in the general store and around the plantation.