Pros And Cons Of The Sharecropping System

During the 20th century, radical transformation was occurring to the political status of African Americans. Blacks were freed from slavery during the nineteenth century and many African Americans were farmers unlike white, whites worked outside of Farm. Many black children did not go to school and white children did. However, during the 20th century economically African Americans stopped working at the farms, and nearly twice likely to own their own homes (Maloney). Even after this period, African Americans still had disadvantages in terms of education, work, home ownership, labor of success, etc. The sharecropping system was made to allow African Americans land however; whites did not want them to gain profit from their crops or own land.

African Americans desired to own land and become independent farmers. The sharecropping system a white farmer would provide land for black families to farm.

The white landowner would provide seed, fertilizer, tools, food, and lodging to the black families (lecture). At the end of the season, the white farmer would receive a third or half of the harvest profit. Black families would receive nothing or ended up in debt because of the share cropping system. In this case, landowners would cheat the black families out of their share or all their earnings. By 1900, most African Americans ended up in debt to whites under an exploitative system known as sharecropping (lecture notes). Sharecropping became a way for African Americans to try to get out of the system and earn money away from sharing farms. The Jim Crow law emerged in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Race riots involved blacks and whites. White mobs burned down homes and business, physically attacked black women(lecture notes) Lynching as well became a form of racial terrorism during the Jim Crow period. Ida B. Wells exposes that lynch mobs killed in order to maintain white supremacy targeting political and economically successful African Americans. Jim Crow became a way for African Americans to turn towards education as a form of strategy of survival (lecture

notes). African Americans as well turned towards political positions to become a voice to the black communities.
African Americans moved from the North from the South because of Jim Crow law.Africans began to create social groups in order to combat white supremacy. Most African Americans responded to Jim Crow law by empowering black communities. African Americans built colleges across the South to train black students to become teachers as well as teaching them how to read, write and respond to certain situations (lecture notes). Blacks as well made unions to improve black conditions in the work force. Black miners created the UMW union, the UMW union fought for higher wages, better work conditions, and more power for African American workers (lecture notes). Black workers face similar problems therefore they suggested to work interracially to improve work conditions. Blacks as well made programs to improve black lives. For example, the NACW wanted to strengthen black families, which to the NACW members believed that strengthening black live can strengthen the national black communities. NACW members built kindergartens and child care (lecture notes). NACW activists believed that African Americans could overcome racism by challenging racial stereotypes. Another organization that protested lynching was the NAACP. The NAACP developed a legal strategy to challenge segregation (lecture notes). Civil rights leaders like Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King stood for African American rights. Booker T. Washington trained blacks to become famers, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cook, etc. (lecture notes). ““...I plead for industrial education and development for the Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I want to free him”(United States). Many African Americans also joined World War II to demonstration that they were wiling to fight for their county and they were not only farm workers. Foreign countries frowned America for being segregated when America is addressing freedom and democracy, notwithstanding what is occurring in their own soil (Borstelmann). Pressuring white leaders to respond, and helped decided Brown vs. Board of Education.