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t. e. Sharecropping is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with tenant farming, providing the tenant a higher economic and social status. Sharecropping has a long history and there is a wide range of ...
Sharefarming. Sharefarming is an umbrella term for various systems of farming in which sharefarmers make use of agricultural assets they do not own in return for a percentage share of the profits, whether this be in currency or in kind. Sharecropping as historically practiced in the USA during the Reconstruction era (late 19th-century) is one ...
The crop-lien system was a way for farmers, mostly black, to get credit before the planting season by borrowing against the value of anticipated harvests. Local merchants provided food and supplies all year long on credit; when the cotton crop was harvested farmers turned it over to the merchant to pay back their loan.
As sharecroppers were often illiterate, they had to depend on the books and accounting by the landowner and his staff. Other tactics included debiting expenses against the sharecropper's profits after the crop was harvested and "miscalculating" the net profit from the harvest, thereby keeping the sharecropper in perpetual debt to the landowner.
Sharecropping became widespread in the South as a response to economic upheaval caused by the end of slavery during and after Reconstruction. [46] [47] Sharecropping was a way for very poor farmers, both white and black, to earn a living from land owned by someone else. The landowner provided land, housing, tools and seed, and perhaps a mule ...
The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 was a United States federal law intended to offer land to prospective farmers, white and black, in the South following the American Civil War. It was repealed in 1876 after mostly benefiting white recipients.
Ned left his father's house to begin sharecropping on his own at the age of 19; he married and began a family about the same time. Realizing that the men needed help, he joined the Alabama Sharecroppers' Union in 1931 to fight for justice for black people and against exploitation. Cobb was a hard worker and was not going to let the white ...
v. t. e. The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history and Southern United States history that followed the American Civil War and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and the reintegration of the eleven former Confederate States of America into the United States.