USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In the early years of Reconstruction, most Black people living in rural areas of the South were left without land and forced to work as laborers on large white-owned farms and plantations in order to earn a living.

Detailed explanation-2: -Approximately two-thirds of all sharecroppers were white, and one third were black. Though both groups were at the bottom of the social ladder, sharecroppers began to organize for better working rights, and the integrated Southern Tenant Farmers Union began to gain power in the 1930s.

Detailed explanation-3: -The life of a sharecropper was difficult. Even in the best of situations, sharecropping families lived in a house and on land that was not their own. At any time, they could be evicted by their landlord. In the worst situations, tenants could be forced to pay exorbitant fees and split profits in an unfair way.

Detailed explanation-4: -Sharecropping developed, then, as a system that theoretically benefited both parties. Landowners could have access to the large labor force necessary to grow cotton, but they did not need to pay these laborers money, a major benefit in a post-war Georgia that was cash poor but land rich.

Detailed explanation-5: -Sharecropping is a form of land tenancy, in which the landowner permits the tenant to use his land in return for a stipulated fraction of the output (the ‘share’).