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What is sharecropping?Cause of sharecropping: The plantation system in the South was ended after slavery was abolished. As a result, the newly freed slaves were poor, and trying to find a way to make a living.
The fix was sharecropping: It allowed poor farmers (in most cases, freed slaves) to rent land from a landowner to grow crops. In exchange, the poor farmers had to give the landowners a share of their crops. |
The image to the left is an example of sharecropping in 1898. Are there any differences between the things you see in the image, and what you would expect to see in a photograph depicting slavery? |
Sharecropping was both a positive and a negative thing:
Positives
- The freed slaves had an opportunity to earn money in the south for the first time. |
Negatives
- The freed slaves were often taken advantage of by the landowners who would put them in debt. - Sharecropping was often seen as slavery, just by another name. They often never earned enough to purchase their own land. |