Working the Cotton Field

In Unearthing Hidden Literacy, Lillie Gayle Smith talks about the lessons she learned from picking cotton in her aunt's cotton field. Picking cotton reminds us of slavery, and while doing this job Lillie was able to learn more about herself as a person and also as a black woman.

She took up a course in graduate school called Black Women's Literacy. In this course, Ms. Smith "observed examples of women's resistance in a course where the male professor had a gender preference for the males when giving an answer" (Smith 39). Lillie was able to connect what she learned to her life in her past and present. She wanted to forget about her working days in the cotton field but taking this course only made her realize the true meaning and importance of this job. Her mother made her and her brother start to pick cotton because she felt that it would teach them different learning experiences, and it did. Ms. Smith talks about how working in the cotton field made her able to listen to what the elders had to say about valuing education. She was encouraged to do well so that she could have the life that they never had.

It was interesting to see how the author connected the hard labor of picking cotton to her life today. Although she wanted to forget about those days, taking that course made her realized that that job was not only a part of her, but it taught her so much. It taught her about herself and about women in general. Women have had to overcome so many obstacles and black women even more. Having an education means a lot because it empowers black women to do more in their life as far as making decisions that will help them better themselves. The literacies that these women learned were what helped them survive in times of racism and when gender was taken into account.
It is important that we as black women think about the struggles that our ancestors before have went through and what we go through today. Although we are not going through half as much as they went through, we have to remember what makes us who we are. We have to make sure that we learn something from every situation that we are in because that only makes us more knowledgeable of other things making us better African American women.