Pros And Cons Of The Sharecropping System

During the 20th century, radical transformation was occurring to the political status of African Americans. Blacks were freed from slavery during the nineteenth century and many African Americans were farmers unlike white, whites worked outside of Farm. Many black children did not go to school and white children did. However, during the 20th century economically African Americans stopped working at the farms, and nearly twice likely to own their own homes (Maloney). Even after this period, African Americans still had disadvantages in terms of education, work, home ownership, labor of success, etc. The sharecropping system was made to allow African Americans land however; whites did not want them to gain profit from their crops or own land.

The white landowner would provide seed, fertilizer, tools, food, and lodging to the black families (lecture). At the end of the season, the white farmer would receive a third or half of the harvest profit. Black families would receive nothing or ended up in debt because of the share cropping system. In this case, landowners would cheat the black families out of their share or all their earnings. By 1900, most African Americans ended up in debt to whites under an exploitative system known as sharecropping (lecture notes). Sharecropping became a way for African Americans to try to get out of the system and earn money away from sharing farms. The Jim Crow law emerged in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Race riots involved blacks and whites. White mobs burned down homes and business, physically attacked black women(lecture notes) Lynching as well became a form of racial terrorism during the Jim Crow period. Ida B. Wells exposes that lynch mobs killed in order to maintain white supremacy targeting political and economically successful African Americans. Jim Crow became a way for African Americans to turn towards education as a form of strategy of survival (lecture