Editing Sharecropping (section)

===United States===
[[File:Arkansas tenant farmers evicted January 1936.jpg|thumb|Sharecroppers on the roadside after they were evicted for membership in the [[Southern Tenant Farmers Union]] (January 1936)]]
{{Further|Black land loss in the United States|African-American history of agriculture in the United States|Jim Crow economy}}

Prior to the Civil War, sharecropping is known to have existed in [[Mississippi]] and is believed to have been in place in [[Tennessee]].<ref name="K12.MS.us">Charles Bolton, "[http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/index.php?s=extra&id=228 Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304190417/http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/index.php?s=extra&id=228 |date=2016-03-04 }}", ''Mississippi History Now'', March 2004.</ref><ref name="TennesseeEncyclopedia.net">Robert Tracy McKenzie, "[http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1193 Sharecropping]", ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture''.</ref> However, it was not until the economic upheaval caused by the [[American Civil War]] and the end of slavery during and after [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] that it became widespread in the South.<ref>{{cite book|editor=Sharon Monteith|title=The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American South|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DPMAXuWaArgC&pg=PA94|year=2013|publisher=Cambridge U.P.|page=94|isbn=9781107036789}}</ref><ref name=":3">Joseph D. Reid,  "Sharecropping as an understandable market response: The postbellum South." ''Journal of Economic History'' (1973) 33#1 pp. 106–130. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2117145 in JSTOR]</ref> It is theorized that sharecropping in the United States originated in the [[Natchez District]], roughly centered in [[Adams County, Mississippi]] with its county seat, [[Natchez, Mississippi|Natchez]].<ref>Ronald L. F. Davis "The U. S. Army and the Origins of Sharecropping in the Natchez District—A Case Study" ''The Journal of Negro History'', Vol. 62, No.1 (January, 1977), pp. 60–80 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2717191 in JSTOR]</ref>

After the war, plantations and other lands throughout the South were seized by the federal government. In January 1865, General [[William Tecumseh Sherman|William T. Sherman]] issued [[Special Field Orders No. 15]], which announced that he would temporarily grant newly freed families 40 acres of this seized land on the islands and coastal regions of [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]]. Many believed that this policy would be extended to all former slaves and their families as repayment for their treatment at the end of the war. In the summer of 1865, President [[Andrew Johnson]], as one of the first acts of Reconstruction, instead ordered all land under federal control be returned to the owners from whom it had been seized.

[[File:Audie Murphy American Cotton Museum July 2015 05 (early 20th century Texas sharecropper's home diorama).jpg|thumb|An early 20th century [[Texas]] sharecropper's home diorama at the [[Audie Murphy American Cotton Museum]], in [[Greenville, Texas]] 2015|left]]
Southern landowners thus found themselves with a great deal of land but no liquid assets to pay for labor. They also maintained the "belief that gangs afforded the most efficient means of labor organization", something nearly all former slaves resisted. Preferring "to organize themselves into kin groups", as well as "minimize chances for white male-black female contact by removing their female kin from work environments supervised closely by whites", black southerners were "determined to resist the old slave ways".<ref>Jones, Jaqueline. ''[https://archive.org/details/laboroflovelabor0000jone Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present]''. Basic Books, 1985.</ref> Not with standing, many former slaves, now called [[freedmen]], having no land or other assets of their own, needed to work to support their families. A sharecropping system centered on [[cotton]], a major [[cash crop]], developed as a result. Large plantations were subdivided into plots that could be worked by sharecroppers. Initially, sharecroppers in the American South were almost all formerly enslaved black people, but eventually cash-strapped [[Poor White|indigent white]] farmers were integrated into the system.<ref name=":1" /><ref name="Eva O 2007">Eva O'Donovan, ''Becoming Free in the Cotton South'' (2007); Gavin Wright, ''Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War'' (1986); Roger L. Ransom and David Beckham, ''One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation'' (2nd ed. 2008)</ref> During Reconstruction, the federal [[Freedmen's Bureau]] ordered the arrangements for freedmen and wrote and enforced their contracts.<ref name=":2">{{cite book|author=Gregorie, Anne King|title=History of Sumter County, South Carolina, p. 274|publisher=Library Board of Sumter County|year=1954}}</ref>

American sharecroppers worked a section of the plantation independently. In South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, the dominant crop was usually cotton.  In other areas it could be [[tobacco]], [[rice]], or [[sugar]]. At harvest time the crop was sold and the cropper received half of cash paid for the crop on his parcel.<ref>{{cite book|author=Woodman, Harold D.|title=New South – New Law: The legal foundations of credit and labor relations in the Postbellum agricultural South|publisher=Louisiana State University Press|year=1995|isbn=0-8071-1941-5|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/newsouthnewlawle0000wood}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2718|title=Poor Whites|encyclopedia=The New Georgia Encyclopedia|author=F. N. Boney|access-date=2006-05-18|date=2004-02-06|archive-date=2012-08-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120829030116/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2718|url-status=dead}}</ref> Sharecroppers also often received their farming tools and all other goods from the landowner they were contracted with.<ref name=":0">Mandle, Jay R. Not Slave, Not Free: The African American Economic Experience Since the Civil War. Duke University Press, 1992, 22.</ref> Landowners dictated decisions relating to the crop mix, and sharecroppers were often in agreements to sell their portion of the crop back to the landowner, thus being subjected to manipulated prices.<ref name="Temple University Press">{{Cite book |last1=Royce |first1=Edward |title=The Origins of Southern Sharecropping |date=1993 |publisher=Temple University Press |isbn=9781566390699 |editor-last=Royce |editor-first=Edward |pages=181–222 |chapter=The Rise of Southern Sharecropping |jstor=j.ctt14bt3nz.9}}</ref> In addition to this, landowners, threatening to not renew the lease at the end of the growing season, were able to apply pressure to their tenants.<ref name="Temple University Press" /> Sharecropping often proved economically problematic, as the landowners held significant economic control.<ref>Ransom, Roger L., and Richard Sutch. ''One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation''. 2nd edition. Cambridge England ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 149.</ref>

[[File:Frank Tengle, Bud Fields, and Floyd Burroughs, cotton sharecroppers, Hale County, Alabama.jpg|thumb|Cotton sharecroppers, [[Hale County, Alabama|Hale County]], [[Alabama]], 1936]]
In the Reconstruction Era, sharecropping was one of few options for penniless [[freedmen]] to support themselves and their families. Other solutions included the [[crop-lien system]] (where the farmer was extended credit for seed and other supplies by the merchant), a rent labor system (where the farmer rents the land but keeps their entire crop), and the [[wage system]] (worker earns a fixed wage but keeps none of their crop).  Sharecropping as historically practiced in the American South was more economically productive than the [[gang system]] plantations using slave labor, though less productive than modern agricultural techniques.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{cite book|author1=Larry J. Griffin|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780820317298|title=The South As an American Problem|author2=Don Harrison Doyle|publisher=U. of Georgia Press|year=1995|isbn=9780820317526|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780820317298/page/168 168]|url-access=registration}}</ref>

[[File:Sharecropper's cabin, Lake Providence, LA IMG 7385.JPG|thumb|Sharecropper's cabin displayed at [[Louisiana State Cotton Museum]] in [[Lake Providence, Louisiana|Lake Providence]], [[Louisiana]] (2013 photo)|left]]
Sharecropping continued to be a significant institution in many states for decades following the Civil War. By the early 1930s, there were 5.5 million white tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and mixed cropping/laborers in the United States; and 3 million Blacks.<ref>The Rockabilly Legends; They Called It Rockabilly Long Before they Called It Rock and Roll by Jerry Naylor and Steve Halliday DVD</ref><ref>The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues By Giles Oakley Edition: 2. Da Capo Press, 1997, p. 184. {{ISBN|0-306-80743-2}}, {{ISBN|978-0-306-80743-5}}</ref> In Tennessee, sharecroppers operated approximately one-third of all farm units in the state in the 1930s, with white people making up two thirds or more of the sharecroppers.<ref name="TennesseeEncyclopedia.net" /> In Mississippi, by 1900, 36% of all white farmers were tenants or sharecroppers, while 85% of black farmers were.<ref name="K12.MS.us" /> In Georgia, fewer than 16,000 farms were operated by black owners in 1910, while, at the same time, African-Americans managed 106,738 farms as tenants.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/sharecropping|title=Sharecropping|last=Geisen|first=James C.|date=January 26, 2007|website=New Georgia Encyclopedia|access-date=April 23, 2019}}</ref>

Around this time, sharecroppers began to form unions protesting against poor treatment, beginning in [[Tallapoosa County, Alabama|Tallapoosa County]], Alabama in 1931 and Arkansas in 1934. Membership in the [[Southern Tenant Farmers Union]] included both blacks and poor whites, who used meetings, protests, and [[Strike action|labor strikes]] to push for better treatment. The success of these actions frightened and enraged landlords, who responded with aggressive tactics.<ref>The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues
By Giles Oakley
Edition: 2. Da Capo Press, 1997, p. 185.
{{ISBN|0-306-80743-2}}, {{ISBN|978-0-306-80743-5}}
</ref> Landless farmers who fought the sharecropping system were socially denounced, harassed by legal and illegal means, and physically attacked by officials, landlords' agents, or in extreme cases, angry mobs.<ref name="All">''Sharecroppers All''. Arthur F. Raper and Ira De A. Reid. Chapell Hill 1941. The University of North Carolina Press, 2011, {{ISBN|978-0-8078-9817-8}}</ref> Sharecroppers' strikes in Arkansas and the [[Missouri Bootheel]], the 1939 Missouri Sharecroppers' Strike, were documented in the [[newsreel]] ''Oh Freedom After While''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://newsreel.org/main.asp|title=California Newsreel - Film and Video for Social Change Since 1968|website=Newsreel.org|access-date=22 October 2023}}</ref> The plight of a sharecropper was addressed in the song ''Sharecropper's Blues'', recorded by [[Charlie Barnet|Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra]] in 1944.<ref>{{cite AV media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FyKigj35Ek| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211109/0FyKigj35Ek| archive-date=2021-11-09 | url-status=live|title=Charlie Barnet - Sharecropper's Blues|date=26 August 2011|work=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref>[[File:Chapel for sharecroppers at Lake Providence, LA IMG 7389.JPG|thumb|Sharecroppers' chapel at Cotton Museum in Lake Providence]]The sharecropping system in the U.S. increased during the [[Great Depression]] with the creation of tenant farmers following the failure of many small farms throughout the [[Dustbowl]]. Traditional sharecropping declined after [[Mechanised agriculture|mechanization of farm work]] became economical beginning in the late 1930s and early 1940s.<ref name="TennesseeEncyclopedia.net" /><ref>Gordon Marshall, "[http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-sharecro.html Sharecropping]," ''Encyclopedia.com'', 1998.</ref> As a result, many sharecroppers were forced off the farms, and migrated to cities to work in factories, or became [[migrant worker]]s in the [[Western United States]] during [[World War II]]. By the end of the 1960s, sharecropping had disappeared in the United States.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}