“… many people do not know how different the South used to be. In the case of the South, there are things to be proudly held up for praise, and there are things that we wish could be hidden. Both are integral components of a past in which mules were central.” Ellenburg, Mule South to Tractor South, p. 5.¹

If you are tracing your family in the American South, you are almost certain to uncover some connection to the cotton economy. Regardless of how close or distant the ancestral connection may have been, the production of cotton fiber was so central to the economy and culture of the region that every family was touched in some way. And no other image is so closely related to cotton than that of the mule, with “its neck bobbing limber… lifeless ears and its half-closed eyes drowsing… apparently asleep with the monotony of its own motion.”² Continue reading “…a past in which mules were central…” →