Sharecropping
By Amber J. Wagoner
General Context
Following the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, sharecropping arose as a method for White landowners to maintain control of land and a cheap labor force. Structured in a way to suggest freedom for those locked in contracts, sharecroppers largely consisted of Black individuals (former slaves or descendants of slaves) and non-landowning Whites.
A landowning individual would agree to let tenant farmers (sharecroppers) work on their land; the contract included living accommodations and a share of the profit of the harvest. Sharecropping was presented to tenant farmers as landowning by proxy, though, in truth, the system was designed to keep Black individuals in agricultural jobs and reduce their ability for economic and social growth.
The system was purposefully made to continue cheating sharecroppers out of a decent living, keeping them trapped within the contract. A sharecropper’s income was determined by the profit of the harvest yield, and only a portion went to the sharecropper. Throughout the year, sharecroppers had to buy all their materials from stores, often owned by the landowners, on a credit loan. When harvest profits came in, the sharecroppers first had to pay their credit to the company or landowner. As a result, Black sharecroppers never had enough profit to move elsewhere and pursue careers other than working on former slave plantations.
Connection to Novel
In the novel, sharecropping is mentioned by name only once, when the novel refers to an area of land used by sharecroppers. Though Jim and the people of the Quarter are paid by the landowner, they lack the freedom to leave at their leisure, and their payments are used to buy goods almost exclusively from the store located near the Quarter on the plantation. Living accommodations are also provided, in housing very similar to that used by mid-twentieth-century sharecroppers. Though Jim, Marcus, and the others are not considered sharecroppers, they work within a system very akin to sharecropping.