When did people stop using slaves to pick cotton?

The use of enslaved labor to pick cotton in the United States largely ended after the Civil War, which concluded in 1865. The 13th Amendment, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery, leading to the gradual transition to paid labor. However, sharecropping and other exploitative labor systems emerged, which continued to keep many African Americans in a cycle of poverty and dependency on cotton farming for decades. The cotton industry has since evolved, with mechanization and other changes reducing reliance on manual labor.