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During Reconstruction, former slaves–and many small white farmers–became trapped in a new system of economic exploitation known as sharecropping. Lacking capital and land of their own, former slaves were forced to work for large landowners.
Approximately two-thirds of all sharecroppers were white, and one third were black. Though both groups were at the bottom of the social ladder, sharecroppers began to organize for better working rights, and the integrated Southern Tenant Farmers Union began to gain power in the 1930s.
Many poor people and African Americans became sharecroppers after the Civil War. Sharecropping was similar to slavery because after a while, the sharecroppers owed so much money to the plantation owners they had to give them all of the money they made from cotton.
Why was the sharecropping contract unfair?
Contracts between landowners and sharecroppers were typically harsh and restrictive. Many contracts forbade sharecroppers from saving cotton seeds from their harvest, forcing them to increase their debt by obtaining seeds from the landowner. Landowners also charged extremely high interest rates.
Did sharecropping succeed or fail?
The fact that sharecropping became so prevalent shows that Reconstruction failed to achieve that goal. Sharecropping kept blacks in poverty and in a position in which they pretty much had to do what they were told by the owner of the land they were working.
Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.
Approximately two-thirds of all sharecroppers were white, and one third were black. Though both groups were at the bottom of the social ladder, sharecroppers began to organize for better working rights, and the integrated Southern Tenant Farmers Union began to gain power in the 1930s.
As cash was scarce, the system of sharecropping arose to meet the need of white landowners of labor for land cultivation, and the needs of poor farmers of all races for physical and economic survival. With a sharecropping contract, poor farmers were granted access to farm small plots of land.
When did sharecropping die out in the United States?
Sharecropping in the United States gradually died out after World War II as the mechanization of farming became widespread. So too, African Americans left the system as they moved to better-paying industrial jobs in the North during the Great Migration. Similar forms of tenant farming are still found in some places around the world.