GREENWICH, N.Y. — Sharecropping is a term that most people recognize, but may not fully know what it means. This farming arrangement between landowners and farmers has been practiced for centuries and in different places around the world. In the United States the practice took hold in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is one of the recognizable features of the Reconstruction Era.
To begin, sharecropping is a farming system where a landowner allows a tenant to farm portions of his land in exchange for a share of the crops at harvest. While the practice was used in places in the U.S. prior to the Civil War, the practice became widespread in the South after the war.
The American South was in disarray after the Civil War. Cities were destroyed and farmlands had been dismantled or had laid fallow for long periods of time due to the Union Army’s “total war” strategy. It was also a time of promise for the region’s former slaves as the end of the war and the passage of the 13th Amendment abolished slavery. One of the main desires that freed blacks sought was their own land. Owning land and working it was seen as a key way to bring stability and economic advancement. It would also help bring greater independence and further establish their newly acquired political rights.
There was hope that this could take place when in 1865 Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 which redistributed 400,000 acres of coastal land in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida into 40-acre plots for freed families. This “40 acres and a mule” policy gave free black men and women belief that they would be able to own property post war. The Freedman’s Bureau was also established to help freed men and women in land redistribution and provide needs like housing, food, and more. However early in Reconstruction President Andrew Johnson reversed General Sherman’s order and required all confiscated land be returned to their original land owners.
This reversal and the removal of the plantation system of agriculture created a problem. Newly freed slaves and poor white Southerners (most of which did not own land themselves to start) were left without land, jobs, or money to live off, and landowners had large swaths of land and no labor to farm them. The Freedman’s Bureau attempted a gang labor system where groups of workers managed by a field manager could be hired out by landowners to perform tasks. However, the system gave managers too much power and it was not well received.
Sharecropping was introduced as an answer to this problem since it was perceived to be beneficial to both parties. Landowners would have labor to work their lands, and farmers would have a place to work and settle, and an opportunity to make an income for themselves. Specifics differed based on the place but in general landowners often provided farmers with land and living needs such as housing, seed, equipment, and livestock. In return for use of land and other needs supplied, sharecroppers gave landowners anywhere from ¼ to ¾ of their harvest as payment for use of their land. Leftover crops could be kept or some of it sold for extra income. The system offered farmers more autonomy and they could choose the type of crops they planted and dictate when and how they worked their plots.
Over time some sharecroppers had the ability to become share-tenants or cash-tenants. By buying one’s own equipment and livestock they would not have to pay as much to the landowner for use of those items. Share-tenants paid land owners with a fixed amount of their harvest, while cash-tenants had the money to make a cash payment for use of the land and keep the entirety of their crops.
By the 1870s the system of sharecropping came to dominate agriculture in the South. In order to bring in the most amount of money most sharecroppers planted cash crops like cotton, tobacco, and wheat. People of all kinds became sharecroppers. While sharecropping is most often associated with former slaves the majority of sharecroppers were white (about two-thirds) showing how prevalent the practice was and how few people in the South owned land for themselves at that time.
While sharecropping offered more freedoms for farmers the system became increasingly exploitative and perpetuated poverty. Landowners’ demands could be high and the use of certain items required additional payments with high interest. Landowners that had large landholdings would sometimes establish a “plantation store” that sharecroppers were required to use for all farm and personal shopping. These stores had inflated prices and buying on “credit” was encouraged since many sharecroppers had no disposable income. Buying on credit incurred high interest rates and sharecroppers often were indebted to landowners. This practice is called a “crop lien” system. Most sharecroppers were also illiterate and were easily defrauded since they could not calculate their debts or perform bookkeeping for themselves.
The unpredictability of farming also played a role. Not every harvest was good and if a sharecropper did not produce enough he would be in debt to the landowner and forced to sign on with the same landowner for the next year. The promotion of cash crops like cotton and tobacco also hindered sharecroppers since growing these crops year after year depleted soil health.
The combination of these factors created situations where families were either in debt to landowners or just barely making by financially limiting their economic mobility. Sharecropping is sometimes referred to as “slavery by another name” or “wage slavery” since families became stuck in a cycle of poverty that tied them to the same land year after year. This may have seemed the case for many black families who, although free, sometimes found themselves working on the lands they tended to when they were enslaved and working for the same landowners who were once their masters.
Poverty and subsistence living was common amongst sharecropping families. Sharecropping families tended to be large in order to have enough hands to help with work. Children would often be pulled from school to work the farm in busier times of the year like the harvest. Women covered all kinds of home chores such making food from the harvested crops, making clothing, tending to animals, and keeping a home garden. “In my teenage years I shared the household chores with Mama. When our crops were being planted, hoed or gathered we (children) worked in the fields… I attended to filling the two or three kerosene–sometimes called coal oil lamps. The lamps were our only source of light at night…,” said Mae Gean McElroy Pettit who grew up in a Texas sharecropping family in the 1920s-1930s.
Pettit also gave an example of the resourcefulness that many sharecropping families had to employ to survive in describing what her family members used as clothing. “My brother and sisters wore diapers made of flour sacks,” she said. “These same sacks made good night gowns for the entire family too. One of my favorite dresses, sailor style, was made of bleached 100-pound sugar sacks. The logo lettering was removed from the flour and feed sacks with a solution of water and lye…”
Sharecropping remained prevalent in the American South through 1930s. However, the practice slowly faded with increased mechanization. Tractors, cotton pickers, and other technological advances enabled landowners to produce higher yields with less labor. Many laborers also left the South for better paying urban jobs in the North during the 1920s and 1930s adding to the decreased use of sharecropping.
Sharecropping was an influential practice in the decades following the Civil War. The practice provided stability to the region and helped restore its agricultural production following years of war. For some it did live up to its ideal of helping farmers earn a living and prosper. However, for many it trapped them in a cycle of subsistence living and poverty.
Chandler Hansen grew up and lives in Easton, NY. He is a graduate of Gordon College where he earned a bachelor’s degree in History. He serves as a writer and editor for Morning Ag Clips.
