Sharecropping became popular after the Civil War's end in 1865 when landowners no longer had slaves and there were millions of freed slaves looking for work. Show
In many cases, former masters turned to their former slaves and offered them jobs in exchange for a portion of the crop. Laborers were offered anywhere from 25% to a half of the yield to keep or sell. But the former slaves had no capital to begin — no equipment, no livestock, no place to live and had to buy the materials on credit from the people they worked for. They often lived in their old quarters. At the end of the first season, though, former masters overcharged the workers and kept the promised payoff. Any remaining debt was rolled over into the next year with added interest. Workers were then trapped; they could not leave the farm until debts were paid. "So millions of former slaves, basically, were free in name only. They were in a new economic slavery known as peonage," said Arwin Smallwood, professor and chair of the history and political science department at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. The U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Established Lands, also known as the Freedmen's Bureau, was set up by Congress in 1865 to support the freed slaves. One of its jobs was to monitor sharecropper contracts, Smallwood said, but the bureau was disbanded by 1872. Some pockets of the south, Smallwood said, had high numbers of African American landowners. These were often Civil War veterans who used their service pay to buy land. North Carolina had many black landowners and their children were the first students attended A & T, which is short for "Agricultural and Technical," when it opened in 1891. Virginia had more slaves than any other slave-holding state before the war. The growth of tobacco, Virginia's king crop, and the growth of slavery are intertwined. After the war, Virginia farmers diversified their and produced more wheat, dairy and peanuts. Sharecropping was more prevalent in areas with labor-intensive tobacco and cotton crops, such as Mississippi and Alabama, said Karen Sherry, curator of exhibitions with the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond. Sherry is completing an exhibition of African American history in Virginia called "Determined: The 400-Year Struggle for Black Equality." It will be on view from June 22 through March 29, 2020 and is part of the museum commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the first Africans who arrived in Virginia in 1619. The role African Americans played in agriculture is included in the exhibition. Sherry said sharecropping in theory sounded like a reasonable system. It is why many poor white farmers became sharecroppers. Eventually, the majority of sharecroppers across the south were white, Sherry said. "But, in practice, the sharecropping system was stacked against African Americans," she said. Whites could get exploited with bad contracts and landowners, but Africans Americans carried the additional burden of discriminatory laws established in the late 1800s and early 1900s. "With the larger historical backdrop, black families had to contend with all of the systemic racism of Jim Crow America, they had to face segregation, they had to face prejudice, they couldn't get loans from banks, their mortgages weren't guaranteed by the federal government like whites," Sherry said. Sharecropping started to wane after the 1940s, she said, when farming moved away from the small family farms to larger industrial enterprises. Denise M. Watson, 757-446-2504, PRE-COLONIAL AMERICAPre-Colonial America1067For hundreds of years, the land in the North American continent was inhabited and cared for by the indigenous people living in the area. Under their care, the land was not divided and owned by individual people, it was tended by multiple tribes which cultivated crops native to the land such as corn, beans and squash. Colonization & American RevolutionColonization1600The arrival of people from Europe in the 1600s shifted the function of the land and resources of America. As more Europeans settled and colonized the land, the indigenous people already inhabiting the area suffered. Indigenous faced genocides and forced removals in order for colonizers to have land of their own. Colonization1607As the colonizers and their slaves settled, colonizers began to privatize the land by dividing it and assigning it to specific people. They chopped down trees to make space for their villages, cattle, and new farming methods not native to the land. Colonization1680Immigration from Europe begins to decline as life expectancy increases; the male-female ratio becomes balanced, and families develop and reproduce. Slavery in America1710The relationship with slavery in northern and southern colonies differed significantly. In the first half of the 1700s, slavery began to be viewed as a sin by the northern colonies. In the southern part, slave plantations were viewed as a necessity for their economic success. The southern mainland colonies such as South Carolina were comprised of a majority of slaves. Slaves did most of the manual labor in southern colonies; their presence in America was the foundation of the colonial and social structure. Slavery in the South1730Slaves were 40 percent of Virginia’s population. Slavery was greater in the south because of the land’s environmental conditions, which allowed the growth of multiple kinds of staple crops exported overseas, such as rice, sugar, cotton, dyestuffs, and tobacco. During this year, 630,000 settlers and slaves were living in the mainland colonies. American Revolution1775248,000 Africans, 284,000 Europeans and 50,000 British convicts land in the American colonies. This arrival of Africans is the peak of the African slave trade to America; almost 90 percent of slaves went to southern colonies. During this time, the American south becomes the world’s only self-sustaining slave society; this meant colonies could reproduce their enslaved labor force without imports from Africa. As the colonies develop and strengthen their political, economic and social structures, they gain a sense of independence and confidence against the British monarchy ruling them. Declaration of Independence1776Declaration of Independence from Britain’s rule is adopted. In the years following, several other colonies begin to recognize and accept it. In, 1781 the Articles of Confederation are ratified and within three years the Peace of Paris recognizes American Independence. Development of the American NationAmerican Nation1784America develops in distinct ways in the north and the south, but both shared the desire to expand westward. The expansion of the American nation meant that the land they colonized was continuously taken from the people indigenous to the land like the Lenape, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole. In order for the nation to grow, theft and genocide toward the indigenous had to occur. For example, the Jacksonian era’s agenda inspired by Manifest Destiny meant the displacement and death of hundreds of indigenous. Land Ordinance of 17851785The Land Ordinance of 1785 is passed by congress, it established a land ownership system. Between the years of 1787 and 1788, America will experience the Northwest Ordinance and the Constitution ratified by eleven states. In 1789, George Washington becomes the First President of the United States. Naturalization Act of 17901790Naturalization Act of 1790 is passed, restricting the naturalization process toward citizenship in America to only free white people. In doing so, marginalizing people of color by denying them citizenship. Manifest Destiny1800Manifest Destiny was an ideology believed by colonizers, it told them that God destined them to conquer America from sea to sea. The expansion westward justified their killing of indigenous Americans and taking their homes. Haitian Independence1804Led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, Haiti wins its independence from France; this served as inspiration for the abolition of slavery in America. Cotton and Slaves in Texas1820Between 1820 and 1821 First Cotton Farmers and their slaves were introduced to Texas. Mexican Texas1821In 1820, Mexico gains independence from Spain. The following year, Moses Austin (Stephen F. Austin’s father) asks the Spanish governor of Texas in San Antonio de Bexar for permission to settle 300 families to raise sugar and cotton to deliver colonists from poverty. Jackson Era1829-1837Due to the Manifest Destiny ideology, president Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized a forced relocation of indigenous people to state-assigned reservations. By moving indigenous tribes such as Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole out of their homelands, the American government was able to take their land and convert it into their own. The relocation created an environment of systematic racism, property theft, and mass genocide for the indigenous. Furthermore, as the land was taken from the indigenous and converted into American states, the government was unsure of how to prohibit or allow slavery as they joined. Law of April 61830The collective value of American slaves was about $577 million. Law of April 6 issued by the Mexican Government closed the border between Texas and the US to stop the white illegal aliens from slaveholding states east of the Sabine River. American immigrants felt little obligation to obey Mexican laws and were growing restless under a government that forbade slavery. Texas Becomes a Republic1836Battle of the Alamo & Battle of San Jacinto between Texas and Mexico leads to the Republic of Texas. In 1845, Texas becomes part of the United States of America. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo put an end to the Mexican-American war (1846-1848) which resulted in Mexico ceding a vast amount of land to the United States resulting in the Rio Grande as a boundary for Texas. Evolution of Texas1850The Compromise of 1850 is passed which consisted of 5 laws that dealt with slavery and territorial expansion in order to defuse conflict between free and slave states. The 1853-1854 Gadsden Purchase between the Unites States and Mexico allows for the development of the southern transcontinental railroad to develop. Navasota, Texas – the region the ITC cabin comes from – develops as a shipping center due to its position on the railways. Civil WarCivil War1861The American Civil War was a conflict between states opposed and in favor of slavery. It was a significant turning point in America’s developing politics, economics, and social structure. After the Civil War, southern states relying on slave labor to produce their crops had to establish new labor systems such as tenant farming, sharecropping, or contract labor. Since owning people and forcing them to work is illegal, plantation owners now need laborers to work their lands. Plantations were broken up into smaller sections and assigned to sharecroppers and tenants. Sharecroppers paid for the use of land and tools by pledging a percentage of each year’s crop to the landowner. They were provided with a small place to live and farming equipment. However, they usually remained in debt to their landlord. Tenant Farmers rented farms for a fixed amount. For the most part, tenant farmers were better financially than sharecroppers since they could supply their own living space and tools. Lincoln Era1861As an opponent of slavery, the election of President Lincoln created a divide in the newly formed American Union. The majority of the opposing states were in the north and the ones in favor, in the south. This year, several southern states (North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas) decided to secede from the Union and create the Confederate States of America to protect their right to own slaves. Emancipation Proclamation1863The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln declared that “all persons held as slaves… shall be free” in seceded states. The proclamation also allowed Black men to serve in the Union army. Civil War Ends1865Civil war is officially over; the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate dead. The Union (North) wins thanks to the help and sacrifice from the newly admitted Black men into the Union army. ReconstructionReconstruction1866The newly developing nation expands by growing its railroad system and developing its coal mining. As a result, development throughout America varies and moves at different paces. Just because the Civil War had officially ended, it did not mean the chaos had come to an end. Conflict with the Indigenous continues and is recognized as the Plains Wars. Four million former slaves are now free; some move north searching for jobs and housing, and some stay in the south as tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Sharecropping and tenant farming are primarily in the south; plantations divided their lands and assigned them to newly freed slaves. Although slavery is abolished, whites continue to believe they are superior to blacks and other people of color. This white-supremacist judgment opened the door to a series of Jim Crow Laws that segregated whites and blacks by repressing blacks’ voting rights, access to transportation, entertainment, healthcare, housing, education, and employment opportunities. Industrialization of a Gilded NationGilded Nation1878For the new American nation to grow and expand, colonization had to spread. As a result, it threatened the indigenous people, flora, and fauna. Indigenous peoples continued to be murdered and abused by being driven out of their homelands and denying them their ways of life. The near-extinction of buffalo made the Plains Indians realize that their way of life was gone. As the second industrial revolution takes off, steel, oil, and electrical innovations make new machinery and mechanized production methods possible. For example, the introduction of barbed wire made way for the development of large-scale cattle ranching and land speculation by providing a means of sectioning off the land and keeping animals in one space. The pace of industrialization looks different depending on what region of American you are in. In the South, particularly Texas, there are ongoing tensions with the Indigenous and Mexicans living in the area before it became the state of Texas. The rest of the history of sharecropping focuses on the region of Texas because it is the context from which the Sharecropper Cabin was pulled. Reservations and Plantations1880Almost all indigenous have been pushed out of their homes and into government-designated reservations. Fifty-one percent of all plantation farms were tenanted, of which 72 were sharecropped, and the rest was being rented for fixed cash rent. Blackland Prairie, Texas1880Mexicans, African Americans, and Whites develop a tri-racial community in a region referred to as the Blackland Prairie, which is now the land between Dallas and San Antonio. By 1900 the Blackland Prairie produced 43.5 percent of the cotton in Texas. Texas Cotton1890Texas is producing 20 percent of the nation’s cotton, becoming the leading cotton-producing state. Mance Lipscomb1895Mance Lipscomb is born in Navasota, Texas. He was a sharecropper on Tom Moore’s farm who used his experiences as a sharecropper to tell the stories of his life through blues music. He and fellow sharecropper Yank Thornton wrote the song “Tom Moore’s Farm,” which spoke explicitly of the conditions endured by sharecroppers on Moore’s farm. One year after his birth, the historic Plessy v. Ferguson trial results in the “separate but equal” doctrine, sanctioning racial segregation in the United States. Taft Ranch1910While plantations in the South relied on African American sharecroppers, cotton ranches in the South West pioneered the use of Mexican wage laborers. At Taft Ranch, a 200,00-acre ranch near Corpus Christi, Texas, Mexicans, blacks, and whites labor together under the “scientific management” of Charles Phelps Taft, brother of President William Howard Taft. Tenant farms1910The census report on plantations revealed that in 41 counties of central and south Texas, 3,468 tenant plantations compromised 32,658 tenant farms, which represented 20.2 percent of all farms in those counties. Sharecropping Decline1910Through 1910 and 1930, tenant farming and sharecropping begin to decline due to a depletion in cotton crop production and the mechanization of agricultural equipment. A loss in sharecropping contracts led to a mass migration of about one million black southerners to urban cities in the north in search of manufacturing jobs. Cotton Production in Texas1920Almost 40% of the Texan cotton crop came from the Blackland Prairies—which made up just 8.8% of the total land area of the state. Great Depression & the New DealEconomic Decline1929The economic decline produced by the Great Depression can be attributed to several things, such as a weak banking system, trade taxes, droughts, collapsing farm prices, and industrial overproduction. For roughly ten years, unemployment increased, and poverty proliferated. In 1933, the newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal series of programs. The programs acted by creating immediate economic relief, reform, and recovery to industry, agriculture, and finance. The rural New Deal programs targeted plantation zones of the South because of the inequality of wealth in those regions, which was then deemed the Nation’s #1 economic problem. The US and Mexico share a plantation heritage. The rural reform movements in the US were influenced by the changes being made in Mexico by President Lazaro Cardenas called agrarismo. Between the 1930s to 1950s, sharecropping and tenant farming have significantly declined as people moved to manufacturing jobs, farming became mechanized, and farm prices declined. There were a few farms in the South that still had sharecroppers and tenants, like the Harry and Tom Moore’s farm in Navasota, Texas. Agricultural Act1933By 1930, there are approximately 301,660 tenants and 105,122 sharecroppers in Texas. In 1933, the Agricultural Adjustments Act is passed as part of the New Deal. The Act boosted agricultural prices by offering farmers subsidies in exchange for limiting their production of certain crops. Tenant Farmers Union1934Southern Tenant Farmers Union meet in Arkansas in an attempt to organize black and white landless farmers against planters and their allies in government. In 1940, the decline of for labor continues, 204,462 tenants and 39,821 sharecroppers remain in Texas. Bracero Program1942The Bracero Program (Mexican Farm Labor Program) brought millions of Mexican guest workers to the United States from 1942 to 1964 because of the labor shortages due to WWII; it was the most extensive U.S. contract labor program. “Tom Moore’s Farm”1948Sam “Lightnin'” Hopkins’ version of “Tom Moore’s Farm” is released and charted in Billboard’s Most Played Juke Box Race Records. Moore Farm1956The Bryan Daily Eagle reports that 65 African American Families lived and worked on Harry and Tom Moore’s farm in Navasota, Texas. Civil Rights and ModernizationCivil Rights1960Changes in the political and economic structure of the American government attempted to move the nation into the 21st century in a new direction. As agriculture becomes mechanized and mass-produced, segregation and civil rights of Americans pushed into question and transformation, America begins to evolve and begin to question the past that positioned it to its current state. Key dates during this era include Brown vs Board of Education, 1963’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Moore Farm1970Due to a contract with Frito-Lay, Moore shifts the production of his farm from cotton, to corn. ITC Cabin1965As mechanization and commercial demand for crops made tenant farming and sharecroppers unnecessary, Moore Farm cabins remained empty for some time. One of the empty cabins is transported to the Institute of Texan Cultures to be included in the Afro-American space on its exhibit floor. What was the sharecropping system?With a sharecropping contract, poor farmers were granted access to farm small plots of land. Instead of paying rent in cash, they were required to give a portion of the crop yield, called shares, back to the landowner.
What effect did sharecropping have on the South after the Civil War?The system of sharecropping resulted in keeping freed slaves economically disadvantaged. They were not paid money for their labor and received just a portion of the crop as their 'pay'. This kept them dependent on the landowners.
How was sharecropping developed?The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping. High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next.
What was the main effect of sharecropping in the South?Through sharecropping, white landowners hoarded the profits of Black workers' agricultural labor, trapping them in poverty and debt for generations. Black people who challenged this system of domination faced threats, violence, and even murder.
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