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Many things changed during the Reconstruction period and when the slaves became free. Former slaves needed jobs to support themselves and their families. Sharecropping and tenant farming was the answer for the latest problems. There were both negatives and positives to sharecropping and tenant farming, but everyone had their opinions on this solution. The whites had strong opinions on freed African Americans getting their own land. The sharecropping and tenant farming was a better societal solution for the time being. This solution helped with both the former slaves, but eventually the former slaves wanted their own land.
Both whites and former slaves had their opinions on why they didn’t care for sharecropping or tenant farming. In the structure of of sharecropping, landowners split their land up between each worker, along with giving them seed and tools. The former slaves would have to give the landowners part of their profits that were made, meaning they couldn’t keep all the money made from the crops to help support themselves and their families. In the structure of tenant farming, former slaves would rent land for cash from the landowners. In tenant farming, former slaves could rent a piece of land, but they had to find the money to pay for the rent. In both sharecropping and tenant farming, former slaves still felt like slaves, the only difference being that the landowners didn’t have as much control over them. Now that whites didn’t “own” slaves they had to pay workers to harvest their crops, which they had trouble doing.
Along with the negatives of sharecropping and tenant farming, there were some positives. Freed African Americans would have trouble getting jobs but landowners needed help to harvest their crops because they no longer had their slaves to do it. Sharecropping gave the freed African Americans a chance to get a job and make due until they can find another one that would help support them. In tenant farming, former slaves were able to afford their own tools because they were able to keep all their harvest. They had their own piece of land that they rented from a landowner, which was theirs to use until they didn’t pay the rent. Landowners are looking at sharecropping and tenant farming in a positive light because they are getting money by renting off their land or getting have of their harvests.
Eventually, the freed African Americans wanted their own land and thought that they deserved it.
Reconstruction gave potential hope and opportunity for the black population even though it failed to bring economic gains to blacks. it instead established social gains as more and blacks migrated to the south, the federal freedman bureau made education more widely available for blacks.
Even though the Amendments were enacted, things still weren’t exactly fair. Black families rented land from wealthy white families on which to live and grow crops. White landowners took advantage of a loophole in the 13th amendment to force the black families to pay 2/3 of their profit or crop as rent. This process was called sharecroppin...
Foley argues that prior to the Civil War, there was a sharp line delineating tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Tenant farmers were almost always white, owned their own tools and rented land for a third of the cotton and a fourth of the grain harvested.
Many blacks would rent land from their former masters, thus keeping them indebted to the white landowners. Henry Black recounts his days as a slave as well as a sharecropper in Henry Black & the Federal Writer’s Project. (Doc. F) He tells of rules still
The thought of free labor was unbearable for slave holders, it bought outrage and many problems in the South. According to the white race African Americans were useful for plantations and with free labor coming into the picture they would be able t...
Capitalism has always been a double edge sword for the United States. It began as the driving force in pushing along economic growth, but it came at the price of the African society. It was implied, and enforced, that Africans were of a lesser class through the means in which they were "used" by the slave owners to promote their wealth and stature. The larger their plantation, the wealthier and more successful people were seen. But in order to do this, the plantation owners needed workers, but if they had to pay workers reasonable wages, they could not yield a profit. Also, in the South, it was hard, rough work in the hot sun and very few whites were willing to do the work, therefore, most plantation owners purchased slaves to work the land. The plantation owner gave the slaves shelter and a small food allowance as a salary. Thereby, the plantation owner "saved" his money to invest in more land, which of course required more slaves to continue to yield a larger profit. An economic cycle was created between plantation owner and slave, one that would take generations to end. Slaves were now a necessity on the larger plantations to work the fields. They were pieces of property that quickly transformed into required elements of plantation machinery. African slaves were regarded as a large, dependable, and permanent source of 'cheap labor' because slaves rarely ran away and when caught they were severely punished. The creation of the plantation system of farming were essential factors in maintaining the idea of slavery.
... and slavery left millions of newly freed African Americans in the South without an education, a home, or a job. Before reconstruction was put in place, African Americans in the South were left roaming helplessly and hopelessly. During the reconstruction period, the African Americans’ situation did not get much better. Although helped by the government, African Americans were faced with a new problem. African Americans in the South were now being terrorized and violently discriminated by nativist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Such groups formed in backlash to Reconstruction and canceled out all the positive factors of Reconstruction. At last, after the Compromise of 1877, the military was taken out of the South and all of the Reconstruction’s efforts were basically for nothing. African Americans in the South were back to the conditions they started with.
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.
... on the plantation was replaced by sharecropping, which had very high rates of interest for borrowing money. African Americans weren’t able to afford this sum and thus forth found themselves in a recurring cycle of poverty.
Since the beginning of slavery in the America, Africans have been deemed inferior to the whites whom exploited the Atlantic slave trade. Africans were exported and shipped in droves to the Americas for the sole purpose of enriching the lives of other races with slave labor. These Africans were sold like livestock and forced into a life of servitude once they became the “property” of others. As the United States expanded westward, the desire to cultivate new land increased the need for more slaves. The treatment of slaves was dependent upon the region because different crops required differing needs for cultivation. Slaves in the Cotton South, concluded traveler Frederick Law Olmsted, worked “much harder and more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions.1 Since the birth of America and throughout its expansion, African Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to achieve freedom and some semblance of equality. While African Americans were confronted with their inferior status during the domestic slave trade, when performing their tasks, and even after they were set free, they still made great strides in their quest for equality during the nineteenth century.
...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.
Another goal of African Americans was the ownership of land. To the freedmen, land ownership was equivalent to economic independency. However, they were mistaken. Economic independency was an unrealistic goal in the southern environment. As former slaves, African Americans were very familiar to the agricultural life style. As a result of Sherman's raids across the south, large plots of land were left uninhabited. Vast amounts of freedmen took the opportunity to occupy these lands. In 1866, Congress also passed the Southern Homestead Act giving African Americans access to public lands in five southern states. Contrary to what the freedmen believed, land ownership did not ensure financial success. Most land owned by African Americans was small and had an inferior value compared to white farms.
Sharecropping was a farming work method that started in Georgia and moved throughout the south and lasted until the mid-twentieth century. Sharecropping was a way for the poverty stricken, both black and white, to make a living to get by and support their families from land owned by someone else. The owner of the particular land provided shelter, seed, equipment, mules, and tools if they had it. The such farmers who possessed their own mule and machinery were a higher class called tenant farmers, which means that they paid the landowner less money. Also, a local merchant would provide food and the supplies they needed on credit. During the harvest time the sharecropper collected a share of the crop and used the money to pay what he owed to
After the Civil War there was a problem on how freed people would survive. The ex-slaves after the Civil War didn’t have a place to settle or money. They had no skills other than farming to procure jobs so they couldn’t earn money. Freedmen’s Bureau provided shelter, resources, an education, and taught necessary skills to get jobs (Jordan 386).
The United States rests upon a foundation of freedom, where its citizens can enjoy many civil liberties as the result of decades of colonial struggles. However, African Americans did not achieve freedom concurrently with whites, revealing a contradiction within the “nation of liberty”. It has been stated that "For whites, freedom, no matter how defined, was a given, a birthright to be defended. For African Americans, it was an open-ended process, a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and culture that had sustained slavery in the first place." African Americans gained freedom through the changing economic nature of slavery and historical events like the Haitian Revolution policies, whereas whites received freedom