Sharecropping System Keeps 75% of Black Southern Farmers in Perpetual Debt

By 1900, approximately 75% of Black farmers in the South worked as sharecroppers or tenant farmers in a system designed to replicate slavery's economic structure. Landowners kept the accounts and advanced food and supplies at inflated prices. Most sharecroppers ended each year further in debt than they began. The cotton economy's dependence on cheap Black labor was enforced by this economic trap and the threat of violence.