Although slavery had finally been abolished, after the Civil War, there was a new system in the South that continued to leave many of the former slaves bound to wealthy planters. By the time the war was over, the South was not doing well financially. The Union victory had also meant that the American economy from then on would be based around the northern way of life, not the southern way, which revolved around slavery.
Former slaves were looking for work after they were emancipated, and former slave-owners were looking for workers. For this reason, sharecropping was created and became not only a response to the economic hardships of the time but also a response to the fears of many white planters, who had not changed their minds about what they felt slavery meant. Sharecropping was essentially a way for many white planters to continue having slave labor- only this time, it had a different name and a bit of a different setup.
In the sharecropping system, planters would give tenants, who were often former slaves, areas of land, and the tenants would basically pay them back for it by giving them a share of the crop they had farmed. Tenants generally needed the use of a variety of equipment to produce enough of the crop, but they would have to repay the planters for the equipment as well. This system left many of the tenants in major debt to the planters and forced them to become dependent on the planters. Also, because they could often not repay the planters, they became forced to stay on the plantations in the South and could not afford to move or find a way out of the system.
Overall, sharecropping was a new way for wealthy plantation owners, who had been used to owning slaves, to continue having a labor force with an extremely similar type of process. The planters took advantage of the desire of many former slaves to own their own land. In reality, when these planters provided land to the former slaves, they were just locking them into a new system that would keep them in a position where they continued to lack liberty.
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?zid=de00f766cfb0b9313f5771bdcb26fa2d&action=2&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CCX3048900548&userGroupName=mlin_m_fadayms&jsid=65f6acb4944bf70d42db0e37bc6f0087
Images:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/emmett-sharecropping-mississippi/
https://ametia.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/sharecroppers.jpg
Images:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/emmett-sharecropping-mississippi/
https://ametia.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/sharecroppers.jpg
https://socratic.org/questions/why-was-the-sharecropping-system-so-hard-to-overcome
Perhaps the most important thing for me personally when considering the concept of sharecropping is that it was merely the evolution of slavery. Rather than having no wages, citizens were paid in resources and forced to rent the land that they worked on. This only put them in definite indentured servitude because they were constantly in debt to the owners of the land they farmed. Today in America, at the Angola Prison located in Louisiana, prisoners are forced to work long strenuous hours with little to no pay at all. Worst of all, they can be punished severely, as much as solitary confinement, by disobeying their C.O's orders. Although the term slavery is not used as much, many prisoners can be deemed as slaves of the prison industrial complex.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-america/406177/
I think that the most important part about this blog (and the idea of sharecropping as a whole) is that this is really just a new form of slavery. Sharecropping was really just a way to continue to have slavery by going around the newly created amendments (13th,14th,and 15th). I think that it is also important to mention the fact that the actual price of the products that these farmers produced, but most notably cotton, was decreasing in value in the world economy. This was likely due to the lack of trade the south of america had with the rest of the world during the civil war. This meant that not only were the land owners forcing the tenants into debt by lending them lots of money, but the value of the products and food stuffs the farmers were producing was slowly decreasing. This only added to their debt and helped the land owners continue their new form of legal slavery.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-vertical-integration-3305807
Sorry wrong link
DeleteSource:http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sharecropping
First, this explanation of sharecropping was very well, and I was able to further understand it. The images also really help the understanding of sharecropping. However, I agree with Noah and Nicholas. The abolishment of slavery was positive, but on the downside of it, the new term "sharecropping" was a simple excuse for ex-slave owners to keep people working like they once had slaves. It could be argued that having the rights to be a "citizen" wasn't the only thing that was "liberation" at this time.
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