Sharecropping and Debt Peonage Replace Slavery as Economic Exploitation System

By the late 1860s–1870s, sharecropping and the crop-lien system had emerged as the dominant labor arrangements for Black farmers in the South. Sharecroppers typically surrendered 50% of their crop to the landlord, purchased supplies on credit at inflated prices from the landlord's store, and at year's end found themselves perpetually in debt — legally bound to remain and work off the debt. Landlords controlled the accounts; illiteracy among freedpeople and lack of legal recourse made fraud pervasive. The system trapped generations of Black families in poverty indistinguishable from serfdom. In 1880, three-quarters of Black farmers in the Deep South were sharecroppers or tenant farmers.