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Sharecropping After Slavery

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After civil was the former slaves were free. While some free men chose to go in search of jobs in the industrial states up north. Most free people in rural areas stayed and looked for work to feed themselves and their families. The sharecropping was one way to acquire work as a free former slave. Landowner started to give their land on credit to the former free man at the beginning of the year. The merchants lent seeds and equipment to the former free slaves. The landowner at the end of the year took his share of the crop but somehow they former slave always ended up short. It was the high price of the seed the farmer buys from the landowner and the high cost of the lending equipment made them always in debt. The black farmers were producing
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Not stating that they were completely free from harsh conditions, but they were free from slavery, allowing Southern African Americans to join tenant and sharecropping. “The sharecropping system arose in the years immediately following the civil war, apparently as a compromise between freedmen who wanted land and cash-starved planters who found it difficult to pay wages” (Whayne 50). African Americans did not like this idea because these actions would remind them of their past of being slaves, they had just gained their freedom and wanted complete power and control to own their own land. Even though many African Americans did not agree with the sharecropping system, this tend to be the only choice that allowed the men in the south that had to support their families to continue working. By surprise Lee Wilson joined in the tenant and sharecropping union, but he treated his men a lot better than majority of the tenants did.

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Reconstruction was not a success. Although it was a short solution when soldiers were there to enforce the laws, it was not a permanent fix like it was meant to be. Some main reasons reconstruction was a failure are sharecropping and circle of debt rose, the Ku Klux Klan, white capping, black codes, and racism was still prominent in the government. One large cause of reconstruction’s failure was sharecropping, and the circle of debt that formed and created a legal form of slavery, known as sharecropping.

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1288 Words | 6 Pages

Before the Civil War most business that was conducted was done by free blacks. Free blacks living in the South often supplied enslaved blacks and other free blacks living in very low social economic situations with merchandise on a very small scale. For example, in 1833 Solomon Humphries owed a small grocery store in Macon, Georgia. He was worth about twenty thousand dollars and had more credit than anyone in town.

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761 Words | 4 Pages

Through their enslavement they worked day in and day out without anything to show for it. A few freed slaves were given the opportunity to become sharecroppers. As sharecroppers, they were given part of the profit that was made by the crops but they were bound to a contract that still held some of their freedoms captive. They were forced to follow orders but in return their families did receive clothing and other expenses at unfairly ratio that worked in the planation owner’s benefit. The freed man had no better option since they were for once receiving the benefits of their

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772 Words | 4 Pages

The problem was slavery was being abolished around the world, so planters could not have free workers, that's where Indentured Servitude came in. Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. With this, people could still make a profit

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625 Words | 3 Pages

To keep this from happening farmers made the sharecroppers indebted to them keeping the sharecroppers from having any money to support themselves. As stated, sharecropping had drastic effects on the relationship between black people and white people. Examples of this are shown when the article states: “Well, I’ve had so much trouble with these black people, I’m going to employ white people” (Painter para. 13) Additionally, the overall actions between black and white people rose wages (Painter para.

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716 Words | 3 Pages

Planters charged outrageously high prices and interest rates for the supplies purchased by sharecroppers. This made it to where the croppers legally were bound to keep working for the planters to try to pay off the debt. But, each year, they would get more and more in debt, making an economic nightmare in the

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620 Words | 3 Pages

The mass of slaves was released from their previous plantations penniless, without anything to help them get started. Since slaves had no money, they would often go back to the plantation they worked on before. This would result in a cycle that the slaves could not get out of, even if they tried. The slaves would work on the plantation and by the end of there term on the field, they would owe money to the tenant. Usually, contracts were signed, so slaves could not leave the plantation till they didn’t owe money, this cycle basically got African Americans stuck in this cycle for a long time.

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America during the 1900s was scarce of money and the system of sharecropping helped build up the economy. (“Sharecropping, Black Land Acquisition, and White Supremacy (1868-1900)”) Sharecropping still occurs in modern-day America but the system is different. Nowadays, people are allowed to rent land and can keep all the profits without giving the money to the landowner. (“Sharecropping in Mississippi | American Experience | PBS”)

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454 Words | 2 Pages

Sharecropping emerged because slaves that did not move away from plantations. IT was a product of the struggles of the Reconstruction and was in part was a good fit for cotton agriculture. Cotton unlike sugarcane, could be raised efficiently by small farmers. Sharecroppers’ freedom meant not only their individuals lots and cabins but also the school and churches. They could work on their own terms and establish rights to marry, read and write as they pleased, and travel in search of a better life.

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(Slides, 12) Freedmen had to pick cotton even though it was the last thing they wanted to do. Sharecropping was when the freedmen lived with their masters, planted on their land, and gave them some crops in return for shelter, cloths, tools, and food. Freedmen often do not have enough knowledge to earn money any other way because when they just got out of slavery they did not have an education. Former slave masters would let freedmen stay on their land for half of the crops they made. Sharecropping was when the freedmen lived with their masters, planted on their land, and gave them some crops in return for shelter, cloths, tools, and food.

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602 Words | 3 Pages

The people who watched oppression rose to the test advanced by the Abolitionists. The shields of subjection included monetary viewpoints, history, religion, authenticity, social extraordinary, and even charity, to propel their disputes. Shields of enslavement battled that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a noteworthy and executing money related impact in the South where reliance on slave work was the foundation of their economy. The cotton economy would fold. The tobacco yield would dry in the fields.

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828 Words | 4 Pages

For example, small farmers depended on the local plantation aristocracy for access to cotton gins, markets for their modest crops and their livestock, and credit or other financial assistance in time of need. The great cotton economy allowed many small farmers to improve their economic fortunes. Some bought more land, some became slave owners, and some moved into the fringes of plantation society. A typical white southerner was a yeoman farmer, who was also known as “plain folk.” These farmers owned a few slaves, with whom they worked and lived more closely than the larger planters.

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235 Words | 1 Pages

In the beginning, the majority of farm hands were composed of indentured servants, people who paid for their passage to the New World by working for an employer for a few years. But slaves slowly began to take the place of indentured servants. It began with the fact that indentured servants were harder to control than slaves. Slaves were also was a better option because indentured servants would only work up to seven years, and after that they could become “independent.” So instead of using these servants, slaves started taking up most of the work force.

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1111 Words | 5 Pages

The first venture into farming for African Americans post-slavery was sharecropping, described as “a type of farming where landowners rent portions of their land to families in exchange for portions of their crops at the end of each year” (History.com Editors 2018). This was a tactic used in the post-civil war reconstruction that kept African Americans from purchasing land of their own. At the end of each year, the tenants of the land had to pay the landowner a portion of their crop. This left the landowners with money and the farmers with low wages, serving as a “legal” way to replace slavery. From this emerged cooperative farming (co-op), providing a way for Black farmers to claim their independence, but collectively.

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