Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an unpleasant, unpopular person.

1919		J. Harris Dizzed 30: What are these boys from the South? Are they cotton-pickers, corn-crackers, stump jumpers, ridge-runners or bog-leapers? [HDAS].
1937		D. Coolidge Texas Cowboys 15: Eastern Texas, according to the punchers, is given over to cotton and corn; and their favorite term of reproach is to call a man a cotton-picker [DARE].
a.1946		‘The Open Book’ in G. Logsdon Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing (1995) 115: Now there’s boosters from poor Oklahoma, / And there’s brokers from old Arkansaw; / But they’re cotton pickers and tinhorn dice slickers, / With none too much sand in the craw.
1950		Western Folklore 9 158: Cotton picker. An ignorant, foolish, or uninitiated person. A ‘rube’ [DARE].
1955		Mad mag. Feb. 19: The cotten pickin’ cotten pickers were pickin’ cotten.
1962		F. Harvey Strike Command 93: That cotton picker would sure have been delayed if he hadn’t hit the drogue [HDAS].
1976		C. Whelton CB Baby 14: You follow that cotton-picker ... northbound [HDAS].

2. a derog. term for a black person.

[1880		E.A. Meriweather Master of Red Leaf 125: [of a black woman] These latter quite looked down on Gilly, and one I heard call her a ‘Country Jake.’ ‘Yes, a regular cotton picker!’].
1930		G. Williams Logger-Talk 15: Cotton-picker. A negro.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1969		S. Greenlee Spook who Sat by the Door (1972) 22: This is a team for men, not for misplaced cotton-pickers.
1970		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 177: The way the Elephant talked about you. / He called your mama a cocksucker, your dad a cotton-picker, / your sister a bulldagger.
1983		I.L. Allen Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 48: Occupational Stereotypes: cotton-picker.
1997–2002		Alt. Eng. Dict. 🌐 cotton picker (noun) black person. Derogatory term for Blacks. Its origins refer to the US’s period of slavery. It is a big insult to any black person in America.
2019		D. Winslow Border [ebook] DuPont is a new boot [...] a do-rag cotton picker who probably fucks his own sister in the ass as a form of birth control.

3. (US) in pl., the hands.

1959		Mad mag. Apr. 31: Nobody puts their cotton-pickers on her new Admiral Picture Puller.
1966–9		in DARE.