Louisiana State Cotton Museum

According to 64 Parishes, sharecropping "came out of the Civil War and lasted until the 1950s." It began in the old plantation districts along the Mississippi and Red rivers as a compromise between newly freed, landless Black workers and planters short of cash. Croppers farmed 10 to 30 acres for a quarter to a half of the cotton and seed. Landlords controlled marketing and settled accounts, and used the crop lien and pressure, including violence, to keep control; Black tenants could not vote.

The museum puts that system on the ground. Its grounds hold a farmhouse, a commissary, a chapel, a tenant house, a sharecropper's cabin and a replica gin house, and it shows the first electric cotton gin in Louisiana. Exhibits include American Cotton History, Rhythm of the Land, Cotton Pickin' and Boll Weevil, and Delta Blues and Jazz. The main gallery has life-sized dioramas, farm equipment and a re-created juke joint, and the story runs to the mechanical picker and the tractor after World War II.

East Carroll Parish, then mostly African American, was also home to John H. Scott, born near Atherton in 1901, who called sharecropping a form of slavery and worked for Black voting rights; a federal court ruled for the East Carroll plaintiffs in 1962. The museum is at 7162 Highway 65 North, Lake Providence. Explore Louisiana lists free admission, and the Louisiana Secretary of State lists Tuesday to Saturday hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (November 2026).