USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping.

Detailed explanation-2: -With a sharecropping contract, poor farmers were granted access to farm small plots of land. Instead of paying rent in cash, they were required to give a portion of the crop yield, called shares, back to the landowner.

Detailed explanation-3: -American sharecroppers worked a section of the plantation independently, usually growing cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar, and other cash crops, and receiving half of the parcel’s output. Sharecroppers also often received their farming tools and all other goods from the landowner they were contracted with.

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: -Through sharecropping, white landowners hoarded the profits of Black workers’ agricultural labor, trapping them in poverty and debt for generations. Black people who challenged this system of domination faced threats, violence, and even murder.