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.