Sharecropping

• Sharecropping


  After the end of the Civil War almost all of the land in the South was returned to its former owners by the government. Many plantation owners turned to the sharecropping system in order to find and keep workers on their land. Both poor African Americans and whites were forced into the sharecropping system. By 1900 36% of all white farmers and 85% of all black farmers were sharecroppers.
• The Sharecropping system - part 1

  A landowner and sharecropper would create a contract. The sharecropper would get land and seed. In return he would promise to grow the crop and give a percentage of the crop to the landowner at the end of the year. The crop split was usually 50/50 but some landowners took advantage of the illiteracy of their sharecroppers and wrote contracts that made the split as much as 70/30 in their favor.
• The Sharecropping system - Part 2


  Because the sharecropper wouldn't be able to get any money until the end of the year when he sold his portion of the crop he has to buy food, clothing, and other supplies on credit from a store owned by the landowner.This way the sharecropper got into further debt.
• The Sharecropping System - Part 3


  Sharecropping took a lot of work. Sharecroppers usually had to use their entire families to plant, tend, and then harvest crops. Sharecroppers often had large families simply to provide enough hands to work the land. The children of sharecroppers rarely went to school as they were needed to help on the farm.
• The sharecropping system - part 4


  Once the crop was harvested it would be divided between the sharecropper and the landowner. The sharecropper would get the value of his share minus debts he might have taken on during the year by buying food, clothing, or supplies from the landowner's store.
• The sharecropping system - part 5


  Often the landowner would tell the sharecropper that the value of the crop was not equal to the debts he owed. Sometimes this happened because the prices for crops like cotton or tobacco fell. Other times this happened because the landowner tricked or cheated the sharecropper.
• To pay off the debt, the sharecropper was forced to sign a new contract giving an even larger portion of his crop to the landowner the following year
• The sharecropper still had to buy food, clothes, and supplies, leading to more debt that he had no way to repay
• This cycle forced the sharecropper to stay on the land for the rest of his life
• If the sharecropper attempted to escape his debts, he risked being arrested and sold into servitude, essentially becoming a slave in all but name
• Sharecropping is a type of farming where families rent small plots of land from a landowner in exchange for a portion of their crop at the end of each year
• Different types of sharecropping have been practiced worldwide for centuries
• Sharecropping became prominent in the southern United States after the abolition of slavery and the devastation of the Civil War
• Sharecropping enabled landowners to reestablish a labor force and provided poor whites and freed Black people with a means of subsistence
• About two-thirds of sharecroppers were white, and one-third were Black
• The sharecropping system severely restricted the economic mobility of the laborers, leading to conflicts during the Reconstruction era