Economic position - sharecropping

• the 13th Amendment transformed the economy of the South. Plantation owners would have to reward workers for their labour. '40 acres and a mule'. Freed black slaves had acquired freedom of movement but they lack land or money and over 90% of them were illiterate. Most had little choice but to remain in the South and trapped in poverty.
• When plantation owners and the Freedmen's Bureau encouraged former slaved to return to plantations where they had once been slaved, many did so. They worked as tenant farmers or 'sharecroppers' for the white elite. White landowners provided the land, tools and orders to black sharecroppers while they provided the labour. Crop produced would be usually shared equally.
• Sharecropping - meant freedom from white supervision and a greater incentive to work; for others, tenant farming seemed no better than slavery. The work and master remained the same and some of the security had gone.
• Freedmen's Bureau - 1865 - designed to help freed slaved through the provision of food, fuel and medical care. Helped the poor with healthcare, education, and employment. Stopped in 1872 - North lost interest in South.