About

Reverse Slavery, also known as White Guys Picking Cotton, refers to a viral image and a series of memes that show a young African American man whipping with a belt three shirtless White Americans as they are picking cotton in a field. The memes often have a face smiling in the sky (figuratively, from heaven) as it is looking at the scene.

Origin

On November 18th, 2013, FunnyJunk ^[1] user mcconor posted the image, captioning it, "My friends and I saw a cotton field. Couldn't resist." The post received over 1,900 upvotes in 8 years (shown below). The image was seemingly posted on Facebook as well, although it got deleted soon after.

Spread

On August 14th, 2015, an edit of the image showing Martin Luther King Jr. smiling at the scene from the heavens, was posted on the subreddit r/funny^[2] by user silawood, captioned "So, This popped on my facebook page" (shown below, left), receiving over 2,100 upvotes in 6 years. On that same post, Reddit user Cannonballlll^[3] commented "That's my brother… He did this in Georgia on the way to a swim meet. He made the bus stop so he could get out and take this picture. (He's on the far left) Edit: one of the other pictures he sent me from that day" and linked to an image on Imgur^[4] showing the same group of friends in the same location, who were this time smiling and laughing while looking back at the camera (shown below, right).

The image grew into an exploitable template in the ensuing years, as people edited numerous faces nodding approvingly in the sky of the photo. For example, Tumblr user jaysca posted an edit that featured Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. in the sky (shown below, left). On March 7th, 2018, Facebook page teslorememes^[5] posted a Skyrim edit (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References