This image, and others like it, were tremendously popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They appeared as prints such as this one, and as stereograph images. This is the archetypical image of the South held by northerners — poor black men, women and children toiling in the cotton fields to scratch out a meager living. Sometimes condescending captions were added in mocking imitation of black southern speech patterns.

This public domain image was taken by Edward Warren Day of Charlotte North Carolina, and copyrighted in 1900. Curiously, I could not find any information on him — he was not listed in the 1900 census in Charlotte, and even a web-search failed to turn up any other photos attributed to him.