1. The Sharecropper Story
(Comments on sharecropping are taken from
“The Warmth of Other Suns” which includes first-hand accounts of sharecropping and how sharecroppers were treated. Pages )

2. Sharecropper vs Tenant Farmer
Tenant Farmer: Brought “something to the table” ie, tools, plow, mules, seed, fertilizer and, of course, his labor
Sharecropper: Brought only his labor to the “table”
Land-owners always had the upper hand. Perhaps for the first time since colonization, there was ample labor for the land as opposed to a shortage of labor

3. Typical Sharecropping “Contract”
After the harvest, sharecropper would go to the land-owner to settle accounts
Land owners charged sharecroppers for “furnish”, ie, food, clothes, seed, etc.
Given the social structure, black (and poor white) sharecroppers were in no position to challenge the while land-owners record keeping or figures

4. Setting the stage for the Great Migration
A “good share” or a “good boss” let the sharecropper break even
“One reason for preferring Negro to white labor on plantations is the inability of the Negro to make or enforce demands for a just statement or any statement at all. He may hope for protection, justice, honesty from his landlord, but he can not demand them.” Hortense Powdermaker, anthropologist, “Warmth of other Suns” p. 54.

5. Thirteen Year Old Sharecropper Boy Near Americus, Georgia
Photographer: Dorothea Lange
Item: FS-32269
July 1937

6. A typical sharecropper’s home in the South during the Reconstruction Era.

7. Sharecropping by county