sharecropping, an
agricultural system in which a landowner allows a tenant to use their land
in return for a share of the crop produced. In the United States
sharecropping arose at the end of the Civil War out of the plantation
system. After the war, many formerly enslaved people established subsistence
farms on land that had been abandoned or confiscated by the Union Army. But
in 1865, under President Andrew Johnson, this land was reverted to its
prewar owners. After the failure to redistribute land in the aftermath of
the war, most workers, Black or white, did not own land. Thus, the system of
sharecropping developed to meet the need of white landowners of labor for
land cultivation and the need of poor farmers to survive economically.
Lacking capital and land, formerly enslaved families (and many white
families as well) were forced to work for large landowners and became
sharecroppers.
On a typical farm under this economic arrangement, each family obtained supplies,
seed, and food on credit from the landowner. They planted the seeds, tended
the farm, and picked the crop. Once the crop was harvested, the landowner
decided on a price and paid the family, but first the landowner deducted the
amount they owed for the supplies, seed, and food purchased on credit.
Sharecropping farmers typically received a fraction of the actual returns on
their labor, depending on the contract. Even in ideal scenarios, the
farmer's share might not cover total expenses. The result was dependency and
debt for many sharecroppers. Because African Americans were prevented from
serving on juries or voting, they had little opportunity for fair treatment
in the legal system and thus had no effective way to challenge this economic
practice. The sharecropping system did allow formerly enslaved people a
degree of freedom and autonomy greater than they had previously experienced
under slavery. For the
first time, some Black families could divide their time between housework
and fieldwork in keeping with their own priorities. But for many formerly
enslaved people, some of whom worked the same land and under supervision of
the same overseers as they had under slavery, sharecropping was like
"slavery under another name."
See D. E. Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers: The Story of Sharecroppers in
the New Deal (1965); A. F. Raper and I. D. Reid,
Sharecroppers All (1941, rep. 1971); R. Coles,
Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers (1972); T.
Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw
(1974); R. D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during
the Great Depression (1990); D. E. Janiewski,
Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender, and Class in a New South
Community (1992); E. Royce, The Origins of Southern
Sharecropping (1993); E. Arnesen, ed. The Black Worker:
Race, Labor, and Civil Rights (2007); S. A. Reich, A
Working People: A History of African American Workers Since
Emancipation (2013); M. M. White; Freedom Farmers:
Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (2018).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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