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, a system designed to replicate slavery's economic structure without its legal form. Landowners provided land, seed, and tools; sharecroppers gave half or more of their crop as rent. Landowners kept the accounts and advanced food and supplies at inflated prices against the crop. Most sharecroppers ended each year further in debt than they began. They could not legally leave while indebted. The cotton economy's dependence on cheap Black labor was enforced by this economic trap and the threat of violence.