How I Arrived In Chicago Essay

During reconstruction, blacks were no longer forced to work as slaves however they still needed to work to support themselves and their families. Not many blacks had skills outside of farming so most worked the lands of the wealthy white landowners but not as slaves. They had the right to do whatever they wanted and the landowners could do nothing about it. Wealthy landowners still needed work hands and blacks needed an income so former slaveholders established the sharecropping system. Land owned by a white person would be farmed by black families and they shared the crop yield. This often resulted in the white person taking more than their share and the black families struggled to support themselves. Sharecropping did little to help economic advancement for blacks and was a way the white man could prevent blacks from making enough money

     After the devastation left from the Civil War, many field owners looked for new ways to replace their former slaves with field hands for farming and production use. From this need for new field hands came sharecroppers, a “response to the destitution and disorganized” agricultural results of the Civil War (Wilson 29). Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a portion of the crops that they bring in for their landowners. These farmhands provided their labor, while the landowners provided living accommodations for the worker and his family, along with tools, seeds, fertilizers, and a portion of the crops that they had harvested that season. A sharecropper had “no entitlement

The journal article begins by introducing an African American couple who resided in Russellville, Kentucky. James Wright held an occupation as a corn cutter while his wife Gladys worked as a cook in a white home. The time span of their journey occurred at the beginning of the great depression all the way through World War II. Seeking better employment opportunities, James traveled to Louisville. Although, his first couple trips were in vain. His resilience and determination eventually lead to a job working for International Harvester. During an era of many trials and tribulations, James found a way to support himself and his family by migrating from a rural to an urban area. By sharing this anecdote the author establishes a mood of hardship

The Great Migration was a relocation of 6-7 million African Americans from the rural south to the cities of the North, Midwest, and West from 1916 to 1930 which had a huge impact on Urban life in the United states. They were driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregations laws, many blacks headed North, Where they took advantages of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the first World War. Between 1910 and 1930, The African American population decreased in the South and increased in the Northern states by about forty percent as a result of the migration. This “Great Migration” was on the largest internal movement of people in the history of the United states and it is a shift that impacted culture, politics, and economics as a new African American communities struggled

Before the Civil War, the South was extremely dependent on farming which was worked by the slaves. However after the passing of the 13th Amendment which outlawed any forms of slavery, the South had to somehow maintain a source of income without slaves. Since much of the South didn’t have enough resources to create factories, just like those in the North, the plantation owners relied on new methods of farming. Sharecropping was the most popular technique used by plantation owners. This meant plantation owners would lend land to people and they would receive some of the crops yield. Since poor white people were in need of land, most sharecroppers were in fact white. Since many southern plantation owner wanted to keep slavery methods, they would take an excessive amount of yield, especially white black sharecroppers. Meanwhile in the

Document B talks about how it was also hard for colored farmers to make a living especially after the Civil War. “They had to get the local merchant or someone else to supply the food for the family to eat while the first crop was being made.” (Document B) After the Civil War they didn’t have much land and many became homesteaders who were given 160 acres along with regulations they must follow. Only 40% of the applicants actually completed the process and were given the extra land promised for them completion of 160 acres. However many found it difficult to make profit off such little amount of land during that time, for that was the reason most failed to finish

During the late 1800s which was the end of reconstruction for the United States of America, was when jobs really started to take skyrocket in the south. According to the white from there the south was starting to industrialize. But indeed it did not the south was still big with farms and agriculture. Which forced African Americans to work as farmers and have the low end of jobs. According to these three documents(Henry Grady, The New South (1890), Testimony of North Carolina Industrial Workers (1887), and Mississippi Constitution (1890))

sharecropping was a natural respond to the loss of capital in South. “Income per capita increased as rapidly in the South between 1840 and 1860 as it did in the United States as a whole.” Forty four percent of all capital in the South were human capital. Thus sharecropping was not only an attempt to have workers available to harvest the crop it was also an attempt at recouping some of their loss

Boudless. (2014, Noverber 14). The platation Economy and Planter Class. Retrieved from U.S History Boundless: https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/textbooks/boundless-u-s-history-textbook/slavery-and-reform-1820-1840-16/the-old-south-121/the-plantation-economy-and-the-planter-class-645-6993/

During the years between 1915 and 1970, some six million black southerners left their homelands in the South to move to the northern and western states looking for a better life.( The Reason why this i so significant to me is during this time period the great moving from one place to another was in effect and during this time period 6 million African Americans from the away from cities South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1970, affected a lot city based life in the United States. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory money based opportunities and marsh separating people by race, religion, etc.ist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first rose up during

While it may seem that the Sharecropper Contract was just a new form of slavery many black families liked the new system. Now they had some form of independence and freedom. They didn’t need to worry about their families being broken apart from being sold. When the harvest was good they were able to make good money, as they did in the harvest of 1869. They now had hope of a

In the South, cotton plantations were the main source of revenue during the antebellum period. From Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, to the development of the sewing machine, this greatly increased the demand for cotton to be export from the South to England and New England. Plantation owners could get many acres of land for little money, especially after the 1830 Indian Removal Act. These plantations depended on a large force of slave labor to cultivate and harvest the crops of the plantations. The United States expanded south and west, and slaves not only provided labor, but they could not quite or demand higher wages. This ensured that

The development of sharecropping was associated with the endless debt cycles that afflicted the entire South well into the twentieth century. The freedmen endured an economic status likened to peonage, (Bowles, 2011) in addition to having their hopes for political and social equality dashed. The entire South suffered, it was the freedmen who paid the highest price. Ignorant and impoverished, they were easy targets for exploitation by landlords (Bowles, 2011) and merchants alike; moreover, their options were limited by the overt racism in the South, legal restrictions and partiality. Sharecropping resulted from the intense explicit or implicit desire of white Southerners to keep blacks subservient to them. African Americans possessed few skills, and those they did possess related almost exclusively to agricultural production; they owned no property but the clothes on their backs; (Bowles, 2011) Many dreamed of "forty acres and a mule" with which to begin life anew as an integrated part of American society and the proprietor of one's own land. Inside of a year, however, a different reality became obvious to most. By 1868, land confiscation and redistribution was not in the realm of American political possibility. Desperation, familiarity with people and surroundings at the old places coupled with reunion of many lost loved ones, as well as the urgings of

During the 1920s, the Midwest had sustained a strong period of agricultural growth. Several years of "wet seasons" allowed the farming industry to flourish - along with a high demand for goods.

Landowners and former slaves were often engaged in labor contracts, often these relationships were contentious and needed intervention by the Freedman’s Bureau (the contract was created and supported by the federal government written by the Freedman’s Bureau.) “Agreements between freedmen laborers and planters stating terms of employment, such as pay, clothing, and medical care due the freed men; the part of the crop to be retained by him; and whether a plot for growing subsistence crops was to be provided.” (http://freedmensbureau.com/labor.htm) Working relations between the landowner and the former slaves were tense. White planters tried immediately after the war to hire white workers for the field-work, but found them not to be good workers. White workers would work one or two days and quit.