sharecroppers
Crop-paying tenant farmers
Sharecroppers are tenant farmers who pay rent not in cash but in a share of the crop they produce.
The system dominated the American South after the Civil War, often trapping Black farmers in cycles of debt to white landowners.
The term now evokes this exploitative history: Her grandparents were sharecroppers in Mississippi.
One who rents property
- landlordProperty owner renting out
- landownerOne possessing real estate
- leaseTemporary use contract
- landEarth's solid surface
cabin · plantation · acreage · cropland · contract · arrangement · eviction · displacement
Money owed another
- creditRecognition or payment deferral
- settlementResolved dispute or colony
- exploitationSelfish use of others
- povertySevere lack of resources
subsistence · landowner · landlord · thirds · quarters · account book · debt cycle · tenant farming
Post-1865 national reunification period
- Jim CrowRacial separation laws
- plantationLarge-scale farming operation
- emancipationRelease from legal bondage
- tenant farmingAgriculture on leased property
Freedmen's Bureau · cotton economy · postbellum · Great Migration · New Deal · antebellum · civil rights · racial segregation
Plant fiber for textiles
- tobaccoDried smoking leaf
- acreageAmount of land owned
- tillageSoil preparation for planting
- cultivationFostering growth through care
plowing · sowing · harvesting · rotation · soil · arable · cropland · farmland
Research conducted on location
- backbreakingExtremely physically demanding
- toilStrenuous, prolonged effort
- harvestGathering mature crops
- plowTool for turning soil
hoe · cultivate · sow · thresh · picking · cotton picking · drudgery · manual labor
tenant
One who rents property
land · cabin · plantation · acreage · cropland · contract · arrangement · eviction · displacement · rental
debt
Money owed another
- creditRecognition or payment deferral
- settlementResolved dispute or colony
- exploitationSelfish use of others
poverty · subsistence · landowner · landlord · thirds · quarters · account book · debt cycle · tenant farming · cotton
Reconstruction
Post-1865 national reunification period
- Jim CrowRacial separation laws
- plantationLarge-scale farming operation
- emancipationRelease from legal bondage
tenant farming · Freedmen's Bureau · cotton economy · postbellum · Great Migration · New Deal · antebellum · civil rights · racial segregation · landowner
cotton
Plant fiber for textiles
cultivation · plowing · sowing · harvesting · rotation · soil · arable · cropland · farmland · yield
fieldwork
Research conducted on location
- backbreakingExtremely physically demanding
- toilStrenuous, prolonged effort
- harvestGathering mature crops
plow · hoe · cultivate · sow · thresh · picking · cotton picking · drudgery · manual labor · sweat
- Rural Agriculturefarmers, farming communities, ranchers, farm workers, dairy farmers
- frontier lifehomesteaders, farmer, homesteading, shepherd, pioneer women
- 1930sNew Deal, Hitler, Nazi Germany, Great Depression, appeasement
- labor fictionfactory workers, labor strikes, labor movement, working class, labor
- peasant farmingpeasants, peasantry, rice farming, rice paddies, rice paddy
- rural folkpeasantry, countryfolk, farmers, farmhands, farm workers
sharecropperslandowners
Holders of real property
landlords · plantation owners · landed gentry · planters · freeholders
sharecroppersyeoman farmers
Self-owning agricultural workers
freeholders · owner-operators · smallholders · yeomen · homesteaders