Sharecropping is a concept that arose immediately after the American cold war in 1865. The Cold War saw the declaration of freedom of every man and the emancipation of slaves. As a result, the white southerners remained with their big farms without labor, while the fee black men were poor and did not have jobs or farms to work on (Anderson, 2013). Thus, the black men were employed by the white landowners, and at the end of the season, the two parties would share profits. This paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages of sharecropping as it occurred in the reconstruction period from the perspective of the black man.
Since the freed black men did not have money, jobs, or land to live on, sharecropping was a great advantage to them (Anderson, 2013). Good white men would faithfully share the profits as initially agreed. The black man would then have a place to stay and a job. Once given their profits, the black men could use this to provide for the needs of their families and to save money to buy land where they would settle in future.
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Despite this perceived advantages, sharecropping was mainly a scam to the black men. The white men used the difficult situation in which the blacks had found themselves in, to exploit and frustrate the blacks (Anderson, 2013). The initial profit would be that the blacks would get half the profits derived from the farm. However, at the end of the season, the white men would deduct the amount that they had loaned to the black man to fend for their daily needs and the cost of having to accommodate the black man on their firm thus virtually leaving the black man with nothing. In fact, in some cases, the black man was left indebted to the white man. This exploitation kept the blacks working on white farms for years with a hope of raising profit which never materialized.
- Anderson, A. D. (2013). Builders of a New South: Merchants, capital, and the remaking of Natchez, 1865-1914. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
