Yahoo Lifestyle Someone Tried To Fact-Check Anthony Mackie About His Family Upbringing, And It Didn't End Well In The Comments
As Anthony Mackie reflected on his journey to becoming Captain America, some people questioned the details in his story.
On Feb. 6, Anthony attended the Captain America: Brave New World Atlanta tour stop at Morehouse College to discuss the highly-anticipated release of his new film.
He's set to reprise his role as Sam Wilson in the latest installment. After officially stepping in as Captain America, he's called into action when an international incident strikes.
While speaking with moderator and host Fly Guy DC, the MCU star shared a revelation about his father that showed just how proud Anthony was of his career trajectory thus far.
This event was in collaboration with the AUC (Atlanta University Center — a consortium of four HBCUs — Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Spelman College).
"My father was told he had to drop out of school in eighth grade to pick cotton with my grandfather," Anthony said in a viral clip. "And I'm Captain America."
"So, when you look at it that way, it hits different," he added
He recalled going to Morehouse College on multiple occasions to visit his older brother Calvin. He became so close with his brother's friends that they eventually became like mentors to Anthony.
Fans were drawn to his story, but some people couldn't get over the statement about his father picking cotton. So much so, that they even tried to call him out and "catch him in a lie" as they pulled up screenshots of his Wikipedia page:
Many questioned the validity of his father picking cotton, despite it being the 1960s, according to their math. But what they might not realize is people were still picking cotton during that time, up until the mid-to-late '60s, to be exact. Although mechanical cotton pickers began to take over in the 1940s and 1950s, there were still parts of the US that benefited from hand-picked cotton.
October 1964: A cotton picking machine on a plantation in the USA.
The image below is from 1960, and it captured a man picking cotton on a plantation in Georgia. Not all sharecroppers had access to the machines, which is another reason labor workers and slaves were used to pick the fields.
"Pitched as a solution for both groups, sharecropping was presented to the formerly enslaved as land ownership by proxy," according to a 2023 PBS article. "It put an end to work in 'gangs' under an overseer while keeping Black workers within the agricultural sector, preferably on the same land where they had been held captive, and incentivizing high crop yields, benefitting landowners."
"Sharecropping, with its prohibitive restrictions on physical and economic mobility, its use of violence and intimidation and its emphasis on maximum production, denied Black Southerners the ability to gain wealth, to exercise the freedom granted them by Emancipation and to gain the education they were deprived of during enslavement."
"Sharecropping had become obsolete in many [but not all] areas of the South by the mid-20th century. With increased mechanization, white planters’ demand for Black labor dried up."
Cotton-picking is oftentimes solely associated with slavery, but the need for cotton didn't begin or end with slavery. During a 2021 episode of The Black Prospector Show podcast, the host spoke with his uncle who picked cotton up until the early 1960s.
Still, there were still commenters who thought Anthony was "playing the victim" due to how his life turned out and the entrepreneurial business his father was able to create:
While others just viewed it as him sharing his humble beginnings. Many chimed in to support Anthony and help debunk all the naysayers:
Whew, this was a lot to take in! What do you think about Anthony's statement and the reactions? Let me know in the comments!
Anthony Mackie reflects on his family’s past when playing Captain America:“My father was told he had to drop out of school in eight grade to pick cotton with my grandfather, and I’m Captain America. When you look at it that way, it hits different”(Source: theauccentralllc/IG) pic.twitter.com/sELf1ptWym
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) February 7, 2025
AUC / Eli Ade / © Marvel / © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures /Courtesy Everett Collection / Twitter: @DiscussingFilm
Captain America: Brave New World hits theaters on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).
