Cotton comes from the flower of the cotton plant a plant in the same family as okra. The flower bud called a “square” grows into a flower. Then the flower forms a boll and about 50 days later the boll cracks open to reveal the fluffy white lint — cotton.

Cotton has been grown for thousands of years. In the US it was one of the first crops grown by European settlers in the colonies. When the cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 which made it much easier and faster to separate the seeds from the cotton growing cotton became very profitable. That meant lots of cheap labor was needed and that was where slaves came in. In the Southern cotton-producing states such as North Carolina Georgia Mississippi and Louisiana known as the “Cotton Belt ” huge cotton plantations developed. By 1850 when cotton was the number one crop in the South three-quarters of the 2.5 million slaves in the US were working on cotton plantations. Today cotton ranks fourth in the US’s cash crops.

Cotton is the world’s most popular fabric as it’s comfortable cool and lets the skin breathe. Many fabrics are produced from cotton such as denim corduroy terry toweling and seersucker. Cotton is also used to make paper in tents coffee filters fishing nets and surprisingly in gunpowder!