The Cotton Museum

Since starting college at Rhodes, I have always been told about the many cultural museums and attractions that Memphis had to offer. I was told to go Pink Palace, the Brooks, Graceland, Sun Studios, Stax, the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, and of course—the Civil Rights Museum. I am ashamed to say that in the four years I have been in Memphis, I have only gone to two of them. I also recently visited the Cotton Museum downtown. Before going to the museum, I felt as though I knew a little bit about the relationship between Memphis and cotton. I had previously taken Civil Rights in Memphis with Professor McKinney, had done some research on the Cotton Carnival (a celebration started during the depression to boost the economy by promoting the city’s most vital industry: cotton), and attended Dr. Beckert’s talk, “The Empire of Cotton.” With my previous knowledge I was hoping that the museum would have a similar emphasis on the culture created by cotton.

The Cotton Museum is small and located on the first floor of the Memphis Cotton Exchange building on what use to be the trading floor. Walking in, guests are given a brief verbal introduction followed by the opportunity to watch an introductory video about the history of the Cotton Exchange in Memphis and the global impacts of cotton. The rest of the floor is dedicated to photographs (a temporary Faulkner exhibit), some farming and weighing equipment, small displays of cultural impacts, recorded interviews with stakeholders in the cotton industry, plaques with general information, and short videos that give more details about the cultural, technological, and economic impacts of cotton.

Nationally and globally, cotton culture is based in negative social situations—slavery, child labor, sharecropping, etc. During one of the audio presentations it was said that “cotton sparked the industrial revolution,” but it also was the crop that fueled the necessity of the slave trade in the United States. For a newly formed nation struggling to make a name for itself, and establish a stable economy, growing and processing crops through slave labor was an integral part in the formation of the “grand nation” we know today. I do agree with the museum’s statement that slavery is both the greatest stain on American history, yet also the greatest triumph of humanity that African Americans were able to maintain throughout the horrific conditions that were thrust upon them even after slavery’s end. Though they were beaten, forced into labor, had all of their personal control taken away from them, African Americans were able to keep and pass down some of their culture and humanity through story telling, music, and dance.

For the size of the museum, I was impressed with all the information the museum had to offer—it gave an overview of the national and global impact of cotton. However, I left the museum thinking that there was not enough information or investigation into how cotton affected the black community beyond enslavement and the creation and evolution of Blues music.