Introduction
The sharecropping system arose in the Post-Reconstruction era as a means of revitalizing the Southern agrarian economy. However, it quickly became a form of racialized agriculture which aimed to maintain the social order that existed during slavery and subjugate freed black slaves to economic exploitation. Sharecropping quickly became another take on covert slavery meant to promote systemic racism in the Southern states.
Historical Background
The Civil War ended in 1865 and soon after the Reconstruction began under President Andrew Johnson. During the Civil War, the Union Army provided many of its freed Black soldiers with 40 acres of land and a mule, a policy which many African Americans saw as proof to vital to economic independence. However, as a first act of Reconstruction, Johnson returned all federally controlled land captured during the Civil War to its previous owners. This forced many of these black landowners that have tended the land to return it. Early years of Reconstruction saw blacks in the rural South having no other choice but to labor on white-owned farms to make any sort of living. The former Confederate states passed restrictive laws known as black codes that would deny African Americans legal equality and political rights. Former slaves were pressured into signing manipulative yearly contracts or risk being jailed for vagrancy. This led to significant pushback in both the South and the North, and Republican victory in Congress to pass the 14th and 15th Amendments and the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 which established legal equality, citizenship and the right to vote for African Americans in federal law.
Despite African Americans receiving these rights, the federal and state governments took little action to aid them in becoming socially equal or achieve economic independence through land ownership. Meanwhile, the economy of the South was still largely agriculture-based and required input of labor and cash to rebuild during Reconstruction. The sharecropping system is believed to have risen approximately ten years after the Civil War. By that time, instead of receiving regular payments, and thus be subject to harsh discipline, many freed slaves preferred to rent land for a fixed payment. Sharecropping would become a foundation to agriculture across the Southern plantations of cotton, tobacco, and other cash crops. Small areas of land were rented out to black households so that they could work it and feed their families while giving up a portion of the crop. Sharecropping differed from tenant farmers, which would provide their own equipment and received little supervision. Instead, sharecropping allowed landowners to lease out farming equipment and dictated decisions regarding the crop mix. Meanwhile, the federal government with its Freedman’s Bureau saw this as a legitimate way for employment of former slaves.
Landowners in sharecropping held significant economic control, due to the debts and leases that the sharecroppers owned to them. Sharecroppers were also commonly in agreement to sell half of the crops to the plantation owner, alongside the share that had to be given up, resulting in price manipulations. Landowners also pressured their tenants through various mechanisms of lease continuance. Sharecropping alongside the crop-lien and tenant farming systems, became the few options for freed slaves to support their families. It is notable that a significant number of poor whites also participated in the sharecropping system, although they usually faced slightly better terms than their black counterparts. Nevertheless, both black and white sharecroppers remained poor by the design of the system. By the 1930’s when the sharecropping system peaked, 5.5 million whites and 3 million blacks participated in tenant farming and sharecropping in the United States, with up to a third of farms in the South being run under this system. However, by the 1940s due to social unrest and a rise of mechanization of farming, the system became obsolete alongside economical shifts of the mid-20th century.
Form of Economic Exploitation
The institution of racialized agriculture was arguably created deliberately as a mechanism which would secure land and preserve the wealth and prestige of the white elite that ran massive plantations. Tough economic conditions post the Civil War forced planters to go into debt in order to continue producing cash crops. Interest rates were high, and plantations could easily go bankrupt, with only the biggest and wealthiest planters surviving into the 20th century and navigating the devastating economic and environmental conditions such as the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Nevertheless, during Reconstruction, many white planters sought out cheap labor to replace slave workers, and most ended up offering the jobs to their former slaves. However, the way that contracts for sharecropping agreements were designed allowed white planters to keep control over poor African Americans. Without representation or economic knowledge, blacks would sign agreements that made it impossible to generate income or let alone wealth. Contractual agreements would include clauses which forced sharecroppers to carry a significant risk in the raising, harvesting, and marketing the crop that depended on elements such as the strength of the crop. In the case where environmental conditions would devastate the harvest, the sharecropper and the family would be economically entrapped to the white landowner. Sharecropping essentially bound the freed slaves to a state reminiscent of serfdom.
Sharecroppers were stuck in a cycle of poverty due to the economic exploitation. The legalese of sharecropper contracts forced individuals to give up approximately anywhere from 2/5 to half of their crop yields and pay debts for leasing vital farming equipment and work animals from the landowners. The months before crops mature, sharecroppers must buy food and clothing, accumulating more debt. Once the crops are harvested, the sharecropper received his ear1nings, but now must pay the debts. The debts commonly exceeded earnings for sharecroppers due to inflated prices or interest rates that landowners utilized. Sharecroppers were legally tied to the plantation until their debts were paid off, promising a greater share of the crop the next harvesting season. However, the cycle kept repeating and it became exceedingly difficult for African American sharecroppers to break free from this contract, or otherwise be forced into prison or other consequences for refusal to pay the debt. The sharecropping system was theoretically meant to provide freed slaves with income, making it legal in federal law, but in practice it was an instrument of systematic economic exploitation.
Discussion and Effect on African Americans
The Compromise of 1877 which was an unofficial agreement to resolve the highly disputed 1876 Presidential election essentially provided Republicans with the opportunity to control the presidency in exchange for not actively enforcing the 14th Amendment in the South, also signaling the end of Reconstruction. However, the 1877 Compromise derailed any chance at creating a co-existing bi-racial society in the region. Jim Crow laws and a racialized agricultural system was established in the South. The loosely defined aspects of freedom for African Americans were further complicated by new labor institutions. The practices of sharecropping, tenant-farming, and crop-lien all served to exclude blacks from white notions and freedoms. While African Americans held voting rights, and therefore, theoretical political equality, because the 14th Amendment was not enforced, the population was denied rights to economic independence. The elimination of slavery was not indicative of freedom, as black men placed in a political nation without having the benefits of land ownership and reform, emphasized the ideology that a free citizen could become a dependent laborer, not much different from a slave. The context of Reconstruction further helped to establish the “juxtaposition of political equality and economic inequality” as the status quo in the South.
Sharecropping alongside other practices at the time is considered to be another form of covert slavery. Sharecroppers were treated not much better than slaves and received virtually no meaningful compensation for their work other than the most basic necessities of life. It became another form of systemic racism in the post-Civil War American society. Many of the African Americans that remained in the South found themselves pulled into labor of the sharecropping agricultural system. As discussed earlier, the sharecropping system was specifically designed as a mechanism in which whites could reassert a hegemonic order mimicking the pre-emancipation days.
Conclusion
Sharecropping became a variation of racialized agriculture, that alongside promoting a racist social order, also created a highly detrimental economic environment which had a significant negative impact on the capabilities of the black population to generate and pass down wealth. With time, this further exacerbated the gap between races in the South, that along with Jim Crow laws which prevented many African Americans from entering the labor market or owning property, contributed to systemic and racialized economic inequality throughout the South and the Midwest.