Sharecropping In The 1800's

The sharecroppers paid "rent" with a share of the crops that they raised, with roughly one-half of all they produced belonged to the white owner (Ransom and Sutch, 1977). The landowner also advanced money to the farmer to purchase seed and other necessary farming equipment. The problem was the sharecroppers rarely, if ever, made enough money from the sale of their crops to pay back their debt. This often led to what some called "debt peonage," and it effectively bound sharecroppers to the land, and the landowner (Bowles, 2011). This was a veiled form of slavery, much like convict leasing was.

Sharecropping was the institution in which freed slaves could purchase a plot of land to work themselves and in return they would have to give part of their crop to the landowners. With the Jim Crow Laws, the African Americans were being forced into working for their previous masters again even though they were considered free.

change. The act of sharecropping and its relation to farming itself has changed, but the idea of furnishing space and tools for individuals with the intention of both parties making some sort of revenue is all over the world today. We see this in all sorts of jobs today, including fast food, law enforcement, and medicine. The economy is based off this concept and it is both a starting point for some and a maintainable source of income for others, depending on the job description. Sharecropping is also a relation to the shaping of American identity. This idea of sharecropping began to take small steps towards reconstruction; it brought African-Americans and whites together to perform the same task for the same reason to potentially earn the same share, even though they did not. Many debts and falling crop prices resulted in insufficient payments to croppers and many African-Americans saw this as slavery all over again. Becoming equal is something America has been trying to accomplish for a long time and this began a revolutionary era where people could work together in peace and be treated as a true American- unbiased of the color of skin or the language they

Between the late 1800s and mid-1900s, to help procure land, supplies, and workers, farmers turned to sharecropping. In mostly all instances of sharecropping the croppers would get a percentage of the crops they worked while the rest would go to the landowner. In most situations the croppers got a smaller percentage than the landowners. In this certain contract between a landowner and the Grimes family in North Carolina, there were some unfair condition. One of the unfair conditions was the results of not feeding his team. The cropper was required to feed his team every day in the morning, noon, and night, and if he didn’t he must pay the landowner five cents. The workers were also required to repair the fence if it was blown over or broken

C. S. Lewis wrote, "Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny." After the Emancipation of the slaves in the American south, many ex-slaves had nowhere to go. Consequently, most had skills that were limited to, farm work or working in the plantation house. By the same token, many years afterward, African Americans, were still born into the southern caste system of sharecropping. Ironically, it was called sharecropping but at the end of the harvest, the profits would be split, with half to the plantation owner and half to the working family. According to my great-great grandmother, who lives only ten minutes from me, part of this arrangement was that the sharecropper family was allowed to live on the plantation land, in quarters constructed for use by a sharecropper family. Once the crops were harvested, the cost of the seed and fertilizer, used to grow the crops, was deducted from the working family’s half of the profits. Also, subtracted from their half of the profits, were food staples to survive until the

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a woman who strongly believed in equality for women and slaves. Growing up, she always tired to excel in male dominated fields. She became much more progressive due to her cousin Gerrit Smith. Then, later on in life she went to a meeting for civil rights in London where women were excluded from voting. This enraged her because she believed her self to be equal to men. Then, she meet like minded women like Susan B. Anthony, and started the first National Suffragettes Meeting in New York.

There were many ways that Reconstruction tried to benefit the freed men, but only ended up making things worse. The practice of sharecropping was invented as a way for blacks to receive an income, since they only knew how to work on a plantation and were limited in job opportunities in the South.. Former slaves would work on land rented from a landlord, which sometimes belonged to their former masters. While these freedmen worked on the land, they received a share of the crop that they had farmed. Sharecroppers needed necessities while doing this work, such as food and clothing, so they had to borrow money from their landlords. This would make it hard for blacks to save money for themselves as they were always in debt from loans. Some say this

     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

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

During the late 1830s through the late 1870s women had little to no rights when it came to certain situations. Some women Such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Catherine Beecher and Mary Livermore all had their different opinions on women rights. Elizabeth Cady Stanton who was a woman activist believed that when it comes to marriage a woman should have the same equal opportunities as a man. Catherine Beecher a prominent writer believed that women should have no rights when it comes to abolition societies. Beecher believed that heaven had designated man “the Superior” and women “the subordinate” and that the purpose of life was for men to have the power to protect the women. Mary Livermore a former worker in the civil war always believed women should have the same rights as men. Now that the civil war is over she reflects on how society has changed when it comes to women rights.

One point that Elizabeth Cady Stanton makes is that the man never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. This is very true seeing that women were not even allowed to work because their place was at the home where they were to raise the family. If women did work for a part time they would not get even close to the amount of money that males get. She also states that he has taken from her all right in property, even the wages that she earns. Women at this time were not allowed to own property. She also states that he has withheld her from her rights, which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men, which even includes foreigners. This meant even if you were the smartest, kindest, and most willing to work hard woman alive, you still would be treated worse than the least respected man.

After the Civil War Sharecroppers (former slaves) and tenant farmers worked one crop agriculture, in small parcels of other owner’s land, in desire to own their own farms. Both Sharecroppers and tenant farmers associated their prospect for political and income equality as being able to secure land and establish themselves as independent farm owners (lecture notes). Sharecroppers and Farmers were often in-debt to the landowners due to drought, disease, etc. of their crops (lecture notes). Both Sharecroppers and Farmers rarely reap any monetary gain from the labor.

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

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

So in due time, Elizabeth married Henry Stanton in 1840. For their honeymoon they had attended the World’s Antislavery Convention in London. There Elizabeth had met Lucretia Mott ( who was the leading American female abolition) this sparked her interest to study the Anglo-American traditions of women’s rights. In July 1848, Elizabeth with Lucretia Mott and other women held the well known “Seneca Falls Convention”. In this meeting, the women created the “Declaration of Sentiments. The eleven resolutions and the Declaration had demanded the social and political equality for all women -which was the very first step proposing that women be granted the right to