African American Sharecropping System

Analyze the workings of the sharecropping system and explain why many African
Americans preferred it to wage labor. Explain why so many sharecroppers ended up destitute and tied to a farm or plantation.
The sharecropping system arose in order to provide whites with a means to have control over land and credit and to provide a basis to limit the mobility of the African American tenants. Additionally, the sharecropping system evolved due to the failure of the contract labor system and the land reforms that were originally established following the Civil War. The Freedman Bureaus established the contract labor system with the goal of being the mediator and negotiator between white landowners and former slaves. Unfortunately, the Freedmen’s Bureau

failed to have any real impact because Southern whites did not support or abide by their laws and there was little to no government oversight to ensure its success. As a result, plantation owners found themselves in situations without slaves or money to pay for a labor force and after the Civil War plantation owners were unable to farm their land.
The sharecropping system that was developed afterwards should have benefitted both the landowner and the former slave. Landowners would be able to utilize a labor force without the need to pay money. In return, the former slaves would be able to have a place to work and an opportunity to build enough profit to move through the sharecropper, cash renter, owner cycle. For African Americans, under this sharecropping system, families would rent small plots of land for to work; as payment, a portion of their crops would be owed to the landowner at the end of the year. In the beginning of the 19th century many African Americans saw sharecropping as a stepping stone towards independence and land ownership. Considering that four fifths of African Americans were living in rural areas at the turn of the nineteenth century, the idea of land ownership would be a likely goal. For many this goal was achieved, “by 1900, approximately one-fourth of all black southerners who operated farms owned their own the soil they tilled” (Glesen, 2007).
Unfortunately, ownership did not necessarily result in prosperity, fair treatment or an easy road. A typical owner of the time would have worked themselves up from laborer, through sharecropper to renter and lastly owner. For those that did make owner, few were able to accumulate much wealth if any, the farms they worked were small and the white landowners were steadily cheated African Americans out of any assets they did gain. The majority of African Americans were not owners but rented the land or worked as sharecroppers, in the hope of getting to the point of ownership. Sharecroppers being the larger of the two groups in the majority of the south. As an example in the state of Georgia, 37 percent of the state’s 291,027 farms were operated by sharecroppers (Glesen, 2007).
Unfortunately, the bulk of the African Americans who favored sharecroppers could offer nothing more than their ability to perform farm tasks. As a result, sharecropping agreements were seldom fair and often favored the landowners. However, even those workers that came with more to offer, such as their own mules or tools, were only paid at a slightly higher rate by receiving a larger part of the crop at the end of the year. Still, there a groups of African Americans that did not make enough to feed their families off of their crops and were forced to pay for food and supplies outside of what they grew on the farms. African Americans were, however, much more likely to farm land owned by someone else rather than to work their own land. Fewer than 16,000 farms were operated by black owners in 1910, while during the same year African Americans managed 106,738 farms as tenants.

Analyze the main factors that impelled black people to leave the South, and the main factors that drew them North between 1914 and 1929. Explain why the Great Migration is considered a “watershed” (a turning point) in African American history.
Starting during the early 1900’s and continuing through the 1960s, many Africans Americans migrated from the South expecting more opportunity, less racism and an increased availability of jobs in the North, in cities such as Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. According to Kelley and Lewis approximately 500,000 black Southerners moved between 1916 and 1919, with twice that many following during the 1920’s” (Kelley, R., & Lewis, E., 2005). African Americans left the South, using various means, traveling by train, boat or bus; a smaller number had automobiles or even horse-drawn carts. Men made up the majority of African Americans that migrated and many found jobs in factories, slaughterhouses and foundries, with less than ideal working conditions. However, female migrants did make the move also, though they had a harder time finding work, spurring heated competition for domestic labor positions. Often times leaving family members behind in order to have a better chance of landing work.
There were a number of factors that led African Americans to begin the Great Migration. The start of the World War I resulted in less foreign workers from Europe migrating leaving factories with a need for a new labor force. The war also called for additional production to keep up with the war. This led to many recruiters to entice African Americans to come north with the promise of work. As a result, black newspapers were known to run ads listing the opportunities available in the cities of the North and West, along with first-person accounts of success. For example, even one of the more respected black newspapers published articles, encouraging blacks to migrate north.
With the North having a history of being more liberal and open to the idea of freedom, African Americans saw the North as the land of the free and the opportunity to prosper.
Unfortunately, racism was still an issue in the cities in the North, not only when competing for jobs in industrialized areas, but also when it came to where African Americans could live. Work in the North was hard to come by not only by blacks, but also poor urban whites, especially recent immigrants. This made it extremely difficult for blacks to find work and even those that could find work were often paid far less than their white counterparts and were forced into manual labor positions (Kelley, R., & Lewis, E., 2005). Aside from the competition for employment, African Americans in the North also had to contend with living in poor areas for much higher rates than whites in the area. “While not yet confined to the city's nascent ghettos, blacks generally found housing available only within emerging enclaves” ("African Americans"). Though segregation was not legalized in the North, racism was still widespread. Despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court declared racially based housing ordinances unconstitutional in 1917, whites in “some residential neighborhoods enacted covenants requiring white property owners to agree not to sell to blacks; these would remain legal until the Court struck them down in 1948” ("Great Migration", 2010).

Explain the various ways that the Great Depression and World War II affected African Americans in the South, North, and West, countryside and the city. Analyze their main responses to this economic disaster.
The Great Depression as well as World War II worsened the already bleak conditions of African Americans.

Due to the fact that African Americans were already last when it came to resources and government programs it was not a surprise that they were the first to be laid off and they that their unemployment rate was two to three times that of whites. In regards to the Great Depression, the poor conditions that blacks had to suffer played a huge rule in a large number of African Americans voting for members of the Democratic Party. At the time of the Great Depression very little support came from the Republican administrators. This led to the election of Franklin D Roosevelt. Initially this did little for African Americans. However public assistance programs were established to help out the country, as a whole. Unfortunately, African Americans often received substantially less aid than whites, and some charitable organizations even excluded blacks from their soup

kitchens.
Mainly because during President Roosevelt’s initial term he was focused on bringing the country out of The Great Depression. In order for his efforts to be successful, he could not afford to have Americans divided. Unfortunately, this meant that African Americans, would have to wait until there was initial progress to the overall conditions of white Americans in order for President Roosevelt to retain the South’s support. One of the best examples of this was President Roosevelt’s failure to support the federal anti-lynching legislation. President Roosevelt confided to an NAACP official that if he had supported the anti-lynching bill. By opposing this bill President Roosevelt was able to make progress that led to many of the New Deal programs being approved. Specifically, the goal of the New Deal was to stimulate massive federal aid programs while improving big businesses, agriculture, and labor.
Though World War II saw the end of the Depression and the rise of the Industrial boom conditions for African Americans did become somewhat better. The Great Migration continued, with the hope that jobs and opportunity could be found in the North. It is estimated that in the 1940’s nearly 1.5 million African Americans migrated north, mainly to industrial areas. However, racism and discrimination continued but President Roosevelt did begin to establish programs that would aid African Americans. Executive Order 8802 was passed, this banned discrimination in the employment of workers in the defense industries of government and established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to help investigate violations. Even with widespread Discrimination African Americans were able obtain better jobs and better wages in more job specialties.
One of the areas where African Americans saw great success during World War III was in the military. A large portion of the African Americans served in the military at this time, many had the opportunity to serve overseas but the military service units were still primarily segregated. However, West Point, the army’s officer producing school introduced integrated officer training, with Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. becoming the first African American to graduate and later becoming the first African American Brigadier General. This integration would eventually lead to the military adopting a policy of full integration in 1949.

Explain the philosophy of nonviolence as articulated by Martin Luther King, Jr.

and other leaders of the civil rights movement in the context of the Cold War and resurgent Southern segregationism.
Evaluate how successful it was as a strategy in the many struggles that occurred between 1956 and 1966.The American Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s and 1960s represents a pivotal event in world history. The positive changes it brought to voting and civil rights continue to be felt throughout the United States and much of the world. Although this struggle for black equality was fought on hundreds of different “battlefields” throughout the United States, many observers at the time described the state of Mississippi as the most racist and violent.
Mississippi's lawmakers, law enforcement officers, public officials, and private citizens worked long and hard to maintain the segregated way of life that had dominated the state since the end of the Civil War in 1865. The method that ensured segregation persisted was the use and threat of violence against people who sought to end

it.
The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, to include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. chose the philosophy of nonviolence as a means to rid the world of racial segregation, discrimination, and inequality. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in the guiding principles of nonviolence and passive resistance. By showing that blacks were not the group of individuals pushing for violence and segregation the hope was that enough people would take notice and this would help drive change. Specifically if those that were outside the South could be swayed by the firsthand accounts of violence that African Americans had endured since being set free.
“According to Bob Moses and other civil rights activists, they hoped and often prayed that television and newspaper reporters would show the world that the primary reason blacks remained in such a subordinate position in the South was because of widespread violence directed against them” (Graham, n.d).
The philosophy of non-violence that led Dr. Martin Luther King and others from the Civil Rights movements relied heavily on religion and the hope that people were generally good. Civil rights leaders understood the importance of the support of active participation from a large portion of the African American population. Dr. Martin Luther King was well respected as a religious leader and received active support from Black churches leaders across the south. Their actions under the leadership of Martin Luther King helped set the tone for future peaceful civil rights protests. King believed conducting and establishing the precedence for peaceful protests, he could demonstrate to northern whites that African Americans were worthy of having their constitutional rights respected.
“This was part of a faith in liberal reform through the democratic process held by King and other proponents of non-violence” (Graham, n.d). Most of the protests that were conducted were spontaneous and focused on local or specific goals and included marches, sit-ins, freedom rides and boycotts. However, after the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by Dr. King, protests began to establish national objectives. Some of these goals consisted of the achievement of federal support for segregation and the enactment of civil rights legislation.