Debt Peonage: Black Sharecroppers Trapped in Forced Labor by False Debt

Across the Deep South in the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of Black sharecroppers were held in debt peonage — a form of involuntary servitude — through fraudulent bookkeeping by white landowners. Planters controlled the supply stores where sharecroppers purchased goods on credit at inflated prices, then manipulated annual accounts so tenants perpetually owed more than they earned. Tenants who attempted to leave were arrested under debt enforcement laws. The Department of Justice documented peonage operations in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi but prosecuted almost none. Peonage was nominally illegal under federal law since 1867.