Mississippi History is too long to be adequately condensed in a paper only 600 words long; however, three things stand out in Mississippi’s history: slavery, cotton, and sharecropping. These three things share a common past. Slavery in MS lasted for decades and it was African-Americans that provided the labor for the large plantations. Cotton was the major crop on many of the big plantations in Mississippi. Sharecropping replaced slavery as the means to keep African-Americans submissive and in their place.
Slavery was an institution in Mississippi for decades. African-Americans were used for free manpower for the labor intensive cotton production. Slavery was hard business especially for field hands who worked long hours from sunup to sundown (up to 18 hours during harvesting) in the hot Mississippi sun. Slaves started in the field well before childhood ended. Women were expected to work the same hours as men and pregnancy did not give women a free pass on work; they worked right up until they gave birth and then had to carry their backs in the field. Field work was extremely difficult and exhausting in Mississippi. Old fields were rare and the ranks of field hands were constantly replenished by owners forcing young girls to begin childrearing as early as 13 years old. Slaves were “driven” by overseers like cattle with the sole goal to maximize the owner’s profits. Slaves who were slow, mouthed off, or committed other transgressions would be subject to punishment including the cat o’ nine tails. The slave family was always at the mercy of their owners. Mother, father, son or daughter could be sold at the whim of their owner as punishment, to liquefy, pay debts, or any other reason. Slaves were passed like property ...
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...and for a share in the bounty. Sharecropping ended up being much more advantageous to the plantation owners than to the sharecroppers, especially the African-American sharecroppers. With crooked land owners and even with those who weren’t, sharecropping families rarely came out ahead in the economic bartering system. They always seemed to owe something or just break even making their continued servitude necessary for the next year. And they could be put off their borrowed land at the whim of the owners which kept protest to a minimum.
Slavery, cotton, and sharecropping all played a major role in Mississippi’s history. Slavery provided free labor to energize the labor intensive cotton industry. Sharecropping replaced slavery as its own form of enslavement. African-Americans were captive under both systems and cotton was the medium by which both systems worked.
Secondly, it is important to discuss the people of the state. According to Wikipedia, the 2010 U.S. census stated, “ Mississippi is an ethnic diverse state with 59% of the residents being White, 37% African American, 0.5% American Indian, 0.9% Asian American and 2% other. With this many ethnic group, the area is filled with cultural activities to promote their ethnic backgrounds. Prior to the 1830s there were many tribes of Indians in Mississippi. However, in the 1830s the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, most of the Indian population was moved to Oklahoma. Now, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is located in Philadelphia, Mississippi and the surrounding counties”. According to the same census, “Mississippi has the highest proportion of African American in the nation.
In the South, however, the economy was predominantly agricultural. Cotton and tobacco plantations relied heavily on the free labor of slaves for their economic prosperity. They saw the urbanization and industrialization of the North, and the economic connection between the North a...
After the black Americans were freed from their slave masters they did not have ‘a cent in their pockets’ and ‘without a hut to shelter them’ . This obvious lack a home, and the monetary funds needed to support them [the freed slaves] and their families, together with the lack of widespread Government support meant that many slaves continued to live in poverty, and in many ways, they could have been better off (economically), had they been left in bondage . For this reason, many Southern slaves ‘had little choice but to remain as paid labourers or to become sharecroppers working on the land as before’ . Sharecropping, which generally involved the ex-slaves renting land, tools, and a house from a white landlord, working the land that is given to them, and then providing the landlord with one-half to two-thirds of the produce . ‘This system kept the black cotton producers in an inferior position’ , which means that while they were ‘officially free’; they were still stuck in the previous cycle of working for their previous masters, without hope of escape for a better life. While this is what most ex-slaves did, some, like Jourdan Anderson, who left the farm on which he, was prior to being freed, with his family, ‘would rather stay here and starve - and die’ than to have his girls ‘brought to shame by...
The crops started many years ago, with the switch grass, which is now made for bundling and farm feed, with out the switch grass we may not have the dairy and poultry we have today. Making sure our animals are fed well, is and important thing for the people and the communities. Cotton is another big thing Mississippi has started. Without cotton we would not have the comfortable cloths we wear today, and the towels we dry off with and the pillows and the blankets we sleep with at night, cotton is also used for many medical reason such as gauze for after surgery, and to keep the medicines fresh such as ibuprofen. I am proud to say that cotton is playing an even greater role in our every day lives.
Between 1800 and 1860 slavery in the American South had become a ‘peculiar institution’ during these times. Although it may have seemed that the worst was over when it came to slavery, it had just begun. The time gap within 1800 and 1860 had slavery at an all time high from what it looks like. As soon as the cotton production had become a long staple trade source it gave more reason for slavery to exist. Varieties of slavery were instituted as well, especially once international slave trading was banned in America after 1808, they had to think of a way to keep it going – which they did. Nonetheless, slavery in the American South had never declined; it may have just come to a halt for a long while, but during this time between 1800 and 1860, it shows it could have been at an all time high.
During the period of time between 1789 and 1840, there were a lot of major changes occurring on the issue of slavery such as the impact it had towards the economy and the status of slaves in general. There were two types of African Americans slaves during the era, either doing hard cheap labor in a plantation usually owned by a white and being enslaved, or free. Undoubtedly, the enslaved African Americans worked vigorously receiving minimal pay, while on the other hand, the free ones had quite a different lifestyle. The free ones had more freedom, money, land/power, are healthier, younger and some even own plantations. In addition, in 1820 the Missouri compromise took into effect, which made it so states North of the 36°30′ parallel would be free and South would be slave and helped give way to new laws regarding the issue of slavery.
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 to the land that he cultivated,” and was forced “to work under any conditions” that his landowner enforced (Wilson 798). Many landowners viewed sharecropping as a way to elude the now barred possession of slaves while still maintaining field hands for labor in an inexpensive and ample manner. The landowners watched over the sharecroppers and their every move diligently, with harsh supervision, and pressed the sharecroppers to their limits, both mentally and physically. Not only were the sharecroppers just given an average of one-fourth of their harvest, they had “one of the most inadequate incomes in the United States, rarely surpassing more than a few hundred dollars” annually (Wilson 30). Under such trying conditions, it is not hard to see why the sharecroppers struggled to maintain a healthy and happy life, if that could even be achieved. Due to substandard conditions concerning sharecropper’s clothing, insufficient food supplies, and hazardous health issues, sharecroppers competed on the daily basis to stay alive on what little their landowners had to offer them.
Slavery allowed the American economy to flourish for over 300 years. It allowed many Southern states to grow at a furious pace without significantly diversifying their economy. The South relied on the harvesting of cash crops such as tobacco and cotton, which were very labor intensive. Without much cheap labor, slaves were relied on to harvest the crops; this provided enormous value to farmers and plantation owners in the region. However, the institution of slavery was challenged in the 18th century by decades of Enlightenment thought, newfound religious ideals, and larger abolitionist groups. After the American Revolution many states would ban the practice of slavery completely and only a few would maintain the “peculiar institution”.
During the 1850's the South had about 4 million slaves. These slaves were very valuable to the slaveholding planter class.
...stocracy to indirectly force poor blacks into working as tenant farmers or sharecroppers, basically slavery by a different name. As planters needed more land and workers to keep up with the demand for cotton, they looked to the Gulf Coast and Mexico as possible territory for increased cotton cultivation. The postwar exploitation of freedmen and the desire of southern planters to exploit Mexico in order to increase cotton production both demonstrate the materialism and greed of the southern aristocracy.
In the south, cotton was becoming a huge success for the southern farmer. Cotton, being a very laborious crop, required the ownership of many slaves per plantation. Unlike the immigrants of the north, slaves were property. Slaves were also much less of a profit. When a slave became ill he could not simply be replaced, he needed to be cared for, after all, this was the plantation owners property. On the other hand in the north if a worker became to ill to work, there were several immigrants waiting for the job.
Plantations did not always start out with the availability to produce crops. It took a lot of manpower and time to get the land into shape. Slaves were brought into the plantations when it was just deserted land, and forced to chop down trees, cultivate the land, and build manmade water canals. The best example we can see of this is the "Carolina Rice Plantation." Hiring the slaves to do these jobs made the land more valuable in the long run.
Slavery was the core of the North and South’s conflict. Slavery has existed in the New World since the seventeenth century prior to it being exclusive to race. During those times there were few social and political concerns about slavery. Initially, slaves were considered indentured servants who will eventually be set free after paying their debt(s) to the owner. In some cases, the owners were African with white servants. However, over time the slavery became exclusive to Africans and was no limited to a specific timeframe, but life. In addition, the treatment of slaves worsens from the Atlantic Slave trade to th...
The South’s viewpoint on slavery was that it was a good thing and that they depended on it. They depended on slavery to run their large plantations and take care of their major cash crop, cotton. Their economy was more agricultural and needed the slaves as workers in the fields and plantations. The South really depended on slavery after the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. This was a machine that reduced the time it took to remove the seeds from cotton. With the invention of the cotton gin many plantations moved from their other crops to produce cotton. With more and more plantations growing cotton it increased the need for cheap labor which involved the slaves. The South soon became a one crop economy and depended on cotton and therefore on slavery. The South believed that slaves w...
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...