The harsh reality of life under Jim Crow: Evocative color photographs show black workers toiling in cotton plantations while white farmers lounge in town

The harsh reality of life on plantations in America's Deep South have been revealed in a series of stunning colour photographs. Pictured, day laborers picking cotton near Clarksdale, Mississippi

Burley tobacco is placed on sticks to wilt after cutting, before it is taken into the barn for drying and curing, on the Russell Spears' farm, vicinity of Lexing

One snap show mountaineers and farmers gathering to trade mules and horses as they seek to add a sturdy animal top their workforce

Migratory laborers take a break and sit on a deck outside a juke joint during a slack season in Belle Glade, a city in Florida 

A weary family sit on their porch outside their house on the Bayou Bourbeau plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana

A laborer sits outside her house while her young daughter, perched on her lap, glances shyly up at the camera in August, 1940, on the Bayou Bourbeau plantation

While the black labourers toil in the fields, the images show white farmers and townspeople gathering in the centre of town on Court Day in a scene reminiscent of To Kill a Mocking Bird

 Two farm workers toil away under the blistering deep South sun to collect Burley tobacco and load it onto a cart, while their horse waits patiently on the side

Two children create their own amusement on the Marcella plantation in Mileston in Mississippi Delta. They are captured kneeling in the shrubbery as the older child shows something to their younger companion in the backyward of a tenant's home

One picture shows the entertainment that workers had available to them with a cross roads store, bar, juke joint and gas station captured in the shot

By contrast, white farmers trade mules and horses on Jockey Street near the Court House in Campton, Wolfe County, Kentucky

Black laborers sit in the back of an open-top truck, ready to be transported to work, while a woman leans against the window as she waits for the driver 

Townspeople dressed in smart clothes chatter amongst themselves as they gather in the center of town on Court Day in Campton, Kentucky

The striking colour photographs were taken during the 1930s and offer an insight into the vastly different lives of black and white people at that time. Pictured, black labourers toil away at the Bayou Bourbeau plantation 

Pictured, the Bayou Bourbeau plantation - which was operated by Bayou Bourbeau Farmstead Association, a cooperative established through the  help of the FSA

The United States Emancipation Proclamation came into power on January 1, 1863, allowing a 'new journey for people of African ancestry to participate in the US Agriculture Industry in a new way.' Despite their newfound freedom, the cotton industry continued to be very important for black people in the southern United States, much more so than for white

By the late 1920s around two-thirds of all African-American tenants and almost three-fourths of the croppers worked on cotton farms. Pictured, a family walking along a dirt path at the Marcella plantation in Mississippi

This peaceful scene depicts locals fishing in a creek near cotton plantations outside Belzoni in Mississippi

In an area struck with poverty and economic instability, an old house stands almost hidden by sunflowers in Rodney, Mississippi