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xtruss · 1 year ago

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What Happened When a Fearless Group of Mississippi Sharecroppers Founded Their Own City

Strike City was born after one small community left the plantation to live on their own terms

— September 11, 2023 | NOVA—BPS

A tin sign demarcated the boundary of Strike City just outside Leland, Mississippi. Photo by Charlie Steiner

In 1965 in the Mississippi Delta, things were not all that different than they had been 100 years earlier. Cotton was still King—and somebody needed to pick it. After the abolition of slavery, much of the labor for the region’s cotton economy was provided by Black sharecroppers, who were not technically enslaved, but operated in much the same way: working the fields of white plantation owners for essentially no profit. To make matters worse, by 1965, mechanized agriculture began to push sharecroppers out of what little employment they had. Many in the Delta had reached their breaking point.

In April of that year, following months of organizing, 45 local farm workers founded the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union. The MFLU’s platform included demands for a minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, medical coverage and an end to plantation work for children under the age of 16, whose educations were severely compromised by the sharecropping system. Within weeks of its founding, strikes under the MFLU banner began to spread across the Delta.

Five miles outside the small town of Leland, Mississippi, a group of Black Tenant Farmers led by John Henry Sylvester voted to go on strike. Sylvester, a tractor driver and mechanic at the A.L. Andrews Plantation, wanted fair treatment and prospects for a better future for his family. “I don’t want my children to grow up dumb like I did,” he told a reporter, with characteristic humility. In fact it was Sylvester’s organizational prowess and vision that gave the strikers direction and resolve. They would need both. The Andrews workers were immediately evicted from their homes. Undeterred, they moved their families to a local building owned by a Baptist Educational Association, but were eventually evicted there as well.

After two months of striking, and now facing homelessness for a second time, the strikers made a bold move. With just 13 donated tents, the strikers bought five acres of land from a local Black Farmer and decided that they would remain there, on strike, for as long as it took. Strike City was born. Frank Smith was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee worker when he went to live with the strikers just outside Leland. “They wanted to stay within eyesight of the plantation,” said Smith, now Executive Director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C. “They were not scared.”

Life in Strike City was difficult. Not only did the strikers have to deal with one of Missississippi’s coldest winters in history, they also had to endure the periodic gunshots fired by white agitators over their tents at night. Yet the strikers were determined. “We ain’t going out of the state of Mississippi. We gonna stay right here, fighting for what is ours,” one of them told a documentary film team, who captured the strikers’ daily experience in a short film called “Strike City.” “We decided we wouldn’t run,” another assented. “If we run now, we always will be running.”

But the strikers knew that if their city was going to survive, they would need more resources. In an effort to secure federal grants from the federal government’s Office of Economic Opportunity, the strikers, led by Sylvester and Smith, journeyed all the way to Washington D.C. “We’re here because Washington seems to run on a different schedule,” Smith told congressmen, stressing the urgency of the situation and the group’s needs for funds. “We have to get started right away. When you live in a tent and people shoot at you at night and your kids can’t take a bath and your wife has no privacy, a month can be a long time, even a day…Kids can’t grow up in Strike City and have any kind of a chance.” In a symbolic demonstration of their plight, the strikers set up a row of tents across the street from the White House.

John Henry Sylvester, left, stands outside one of the tents strikers erected in Washington, D.C. in April 1966. Photo by Rowland Sherman

“It was a good, dramatic, in-your-face presentation,” Smith told American Experience, nearly 60 years after the strikers camped out. “It didn’t do much to shake anything out of the Congress of the United States or the President and his Cabinet. But it gave us a feeling that we’d done something to help ourselves.” The protestors returned home empty-handed. Nevertheless, the residents of Strike City had secured enough funds from a Chicago-based organization to begin the construction of permanent brick homes; and to provide local Black children with a literacy program, which was held in a wood-and-cinder-block community center they erected.

The long-term sustainability of Strike City, however, depended on the creation of a self-sufficient economy. Early on, Strike City residents had earned money by handcrafting nativity scenes, but this proved inadequate. Soon, Strike City residents were planning on constructing a brick factory that would provide employment and building material for the settlement’s expansion. But the $25,000 price tag of the project proved to be too much, and with no employment, many strikers began to drift away. Strike City never recovered.

Still, its direct impact was apparent when, in 1965, Mississippi schools reluctantly complied with the 1964 Civil Rights Act by offering a freedom-of-choice period in which children were purportedly allowed to register at any school of their choice. In reality, however, most Black parents were too afraid to send their children to all-white schools—except for the parents living at Strike City who had already radically declared their independence . Once Leland’s public schools were legally open to them, Strike City kids were the first ones to register. Their parents’ determination to give them a better life had already begun to pay dividends.

Smith recalled driving Strike City’s children to their first day of school in the fall of 1970. “I remember when I dropped them off, they jumped out and ran in, and I said, ‘They don't have a clue what they were getting themselves into.’ But you know kids are innocent and they’re always braver than we think they are. And they went in there like it was their schoolhouse. Like they belonged there like everybody else.”

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janeaddamspeace · 8 years ago

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Books Help Kids Understand What It's Like to Be a Refugee #JACBA Newsletter 10Feb2017

Books to Help Kids Understand What It's Like to Be a Refugee

Mama's Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation by Edwidge Danticat, illustrated by Leslie Staub Danticat's celebration of storytelling and the bond between mother and child is an empowering one. Saya, whose mother is being detained, writes a story inspired by her mother's experience. When her father sends Saya's story to a newspaper, she learns firsthand that one voice, one story, can make a difference.

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai Lai's bestselling Newbery Honor book, written in short free verse, powerfully captures the alienation felt by a child forced into a new and often unwelcoming world. As 10-year-old Ha tries to adjust to life in Alabama, where she is bullied by her peers and befriended by a teacher who has some understanding of her experiences back in Vietnam, readers can empathize with Ha and all of those who are considered "foreigners" in this story of strength and resilience.

The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Shane W. Evans Children's literature powerhouse Andrea Davis Pinkney uses verse to tell Amira's tale of loss, hardship, and ultimately hope. Pinkney notably offers a detailed picture of Amira's rich home life and environment in Sudan before it is destroyed by war, and readers will celebrate when a silent Amira is offered the gift of literacy that reminds her that her voice matters and has enormous power.

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park Salva Dut led a group of over 100 boys on a harrowing journey through danger, sickness, and starvation from war-torn South Sudan to a refugee camp in Kenya. He was then relocated to the United States, where he got a college degree and went on to found Water for South Sudan, an organization that provides deep water wells in South Sudan. The bestselling A Long Walk to Water, based on Mr. Dut's experience, has inspired children around the world to make a difference in their communities and beyond. Both Salva Dut and Linda Sue Park have delivered TED talks detailing their work, the power of diverse stories, and the ability of young people to create change in our world: Salva Dut, "I Kept Walking"; and Linda Sue Park, "Can a Children's Book Change the World?".

How I Became a Ghost by Tim Tingle The first in a trilogy, Tingle's novel tells the story of Isaac, a 10-year-old member of the Choctaw Nation who is forced from his home in what is now Mississippi and travels through the tragedies of the "Trail of Tears" with his family in 1830. In a review of this "ghost story," American Indians in Children's Literature notes that "Scary things do happen - this is a story about the forced relocation of a people, but it is more about the humanity of the people on that trail than it is about that forced relocation." Tingle offers a full-bodied portrait of an important piece of American history whose legacy lives on.

Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins Tu Reh, a Karenni boy, has witnessed the destruction of his family's home and bamboo fields by Burmese soldiers. Chiko is a Burmese boy who loves books and has no interest in combat. The boys' lives intersect when Chiko, forced to become a soldier, is injured and Tu Reh discovers him. Perkins's delicately told story of the enduring power of compassion is thoughtful and satisfying. A helpful Discussion and Activity Guide and Book Club Guide are available from the publisher.

Mama's Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation written by Edwidge Danticat, illustrated by Leslie Staub 2016 Awardee

Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai 2012 Awardee

Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney 2011 Awardee

Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride, by Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney 2010 Awardee

We March written and illustrated by Shane W. Evans 2013 Awardee

Lillian's Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Shane W. Evan 2016 Awardee

A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story by Linda Sue Park 2011 Awardee

When My Name Was Keoko written by Linda Sue Park 2003 Awardee

Crossing Bok Chitto: told in written form by nationally recognized Choctaw storyteller, Tim Tingle 2007 Awardee

Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins 2008 Awardee

POETRY IN A TIME OF PROTEST By Edwidge Danticat

"Without community, there is no liberation," the poet and activist Audre Lorde wrote, nearly thirty-five years ago. In our rallying and marching, we rediscovered community in one another.

Mama's Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation written by Edwidge Danticat, illustrated by Leslie Staub 2016 Awardee

Booklist Feature Article, Guest Speaker: Real Human Beings by Joseph Bruchac

Today, things are different-for YA literature and writing by and about Native Americans. My favorite reading these days-at the age of 74-is YA. True, there are not enough books truly reflecting indigenous reality. Racial prejudice and cultural stereotyping remain alive and well in the disunited states of America. I'm still asked by students what it was like "when Indians were alive." But the vitality and variety of YA writing is more exciting than ever before.

The Heart of a Chief written by Joseph Bruchac 1999 Awardee

Bruchac featured storyteller at annual Dawnlands Storyfest

Bruchac is perhaps best known for his bestselling "Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children" and other titles in the "Keepers" series, which integrate science and folklore in highly entertaining and interactive formats that make them ideal for classrooms and family libraries alike.

Joseph Bruchac was the featured storyteller at the annual Dawnlands Storyfest at the Mariposa Museum and World Culture Center in Peterborough. He was joined by his son Jesse Bruchac, a leading figure in indigenous efforts to preserve the Abenaki language and culture.

The Heart of a Chief written by Joseph Bruchac 1999 Awardee

20 Children's Books From Around The World To Read For Multicultural Children's Book Day

January 27, marks the fourth annual Multicultural Children's Book Day, a day-long celebration of reading diversely that focuses exclusively on global and multicultural children's books.

'Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl's Courage Changed Music' by Margarita Engle and Rafael Lopez

'Thunder Boy Jr.' by Sherman Alexie and Yuyi Morales

'Freedom in Congo Square' by Carole Boston Weatherford and R. Gregory Christie

'The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth, & Harlem's Greatest Bookstore' by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson and R. Gregory Christie

Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal by Margarita Engle 2015 year Awardee

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom, written by Margarita Engle 2009 Awardee

Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez, written by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Yuyi Morales 2004 Awardee

Birmingham, 1963 by Carole Boston Weatherford 2008 Awardee

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem's Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie 2016 year Awardee

Film festival, discussions highlight Black History Month celebrations in Athens, GA

The national annual "African American Read-In," this year is dedicated to Bettye Stroud, a former public school media specialist and the author of several illustrated children's books that chronicle African American History.

Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Bend written by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud 2012 Awardee

3 New Black History Month Reads for Kids

Lift Your Light a Little Higher: The Story of Stephen Bishop: Slave-Explorer, by Heather Hensen, illustrated by Bryan Collier Join Stephen Bishop, a slave in 1840, as he lights the way through the largest cave system in the world. Bishop served as tour guide in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, where he found a measure of independence in the darkness.

The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, by Cynthia Levinson, illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton Audrey was just 9 years old in 1963, during the civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., but that didn't stop her from standing up and speaking out against racial segregation. Learn how her confidence and bravery made a difference.

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. written by Doreen Rappaport with artwork by Bryan Collier 2002 Awardee

We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March written by Cynthia Levinson 2013 Awardee

We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song written by Debbie Levy and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton 2014 Awardee

How the smallest, most abundant bacteria inspired a children's book series

Institute Professor Penny Chisholm teams up with author and illustrator Molly Bang to write environmental children's book series.

Chisholm partnered with her longtime friend, award winning children's book author and illustrator Molly Bang, to write a series of children's books explaining these fundamental environmental processes in an approachable way.

The series is meant to stand the test of time by explaining fundamental processes, but that doesn't stop Chisholm and Bang from briefly acknowledging humans' uncertain impact on the environment by touching on topics such as climate change and fossil fuels. Chisholm asks, "If you don't understand that the mass of plants come from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that there's a massive exchange of CO2, from photosynthesis and respiration, how can you understand the role of fossil fuels and climate change?"

The illustrations, hand-painted by Bang, are colorful and animated, but are also structurally and anatomically correct. Bang's parents were scientists, and she learns the science behind the illustrations from Chisholm.

When Sophie Gets Angry -- Really, Really Angry... written by Molly Bang 2000 Awardee

AUTHOR APPEARANCES

Library observes Black History Month

Black History Month will be observed in a series of free February programs and activities at main library and various branches of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

Andrea Davis Pinkney, the author who lives in upstate New York, will appear at 10 a.m. Feb. 24 at the Austintown branch, at 1 p.m. Feb. 24 at the Newport branch and at 11 a.m. Feb. 25 at the main library.

Her program, for schoolchildren and adults, will feature audience participation, singing, show and tell and readings from her many books.

Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney 2011 Awardee

Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride, by Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney 2010 Awardee

Bloomfield, Paterson talks to highlight black history

Two prominent authors seeking to improve race relations will speak at schools in Bloomfield and Paterson celebrating Black History Month next week.

Ann Bausum, author of "The March Against Fear," a National Geographic publication detailing a 1966 civil rights march across Mississippi spurred by the shooting of a black man by a white man, will speak along with Michael H. Cottman, author of a youth-oriented book detailing the history of a slave ship that sank off of the coast of Florida in 1700.

Marching to the Mountaintop: How Poverty, Labor Fights and Civil Rights Set the Stage for Martin Luther King Jr's Final Hours, written by Ann Bausum 2013 Awardee

With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote, by Ann Bausum 2005 Awardee

Tickets available for 2017 Arbuthnot Lecture featuring Jacqueline Woodson

The lecture, titled "What Gets Left Behind: Stories From The Great Migration," will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 1, 2017 in the W. W. Hootie Johnson Performance Hall, in the Darla Moore School of Business, at the University of South Carolina. Required tickets are free for the lecture.

Each Kindness written by Jacqueline Woodson 2013 Awardee

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun written by Jacqueline Woodson 1996 Awardee

I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This written by Jacqueline Woodson 1995 Awardee

Choctaw Storyteller Tim Tingle At Mariposa Storytelling Festival

The 30th Mariposa Storytelling Festival will be celebrating its Grand Finale weekend, Mar. 10 – 12, at the Mariposa County High School. Sunday's "Brunch and Stories with the Tellers" will be at the Mariposa Senior Center.

His first children's book, Crossing Bok Chitto, garnered over twenty state and national awards, and was an Editor's Choice in the New York Times Book Review.

Crossing Bok Chitto: told in written form by nationally recognized Choctaw storyteller, Tim Tingle 2007 Awardee

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Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award annually acknowledges books published in the U.S. during the previous year. Books commended by the Award address themes of topics that engage children in thinking about peace, justice, world community and/or equality of the sexes and all races. The books also must meet conventional standards of literacy and artistic excellence.

A national committee chooses winners and honor books for younger and older children.

Read more about the 2016 Awards.

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xtruss · 1 year ago

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Sharecropping: Slavery Rerouted

Though slavery was abolished in 1865, sharecropping would keep most Black Southerners impoverished and immobile for decades to come.

— Published: August 16, 2023 | By Jared Tetreau | The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi's Schools | Article | Sunday August 20, 2023

Sharecropper's children. Montgomery County, Alabama, 1937, photographer Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress

“The White Folks had all the Courts, all the Guns, all the Hounds, all the Railroads, all the Telegraph Wires, all the Newspapers, all the Money and nearly all the Land – and we had only our Ignorance, our Poverty and our Empty Hands.” — an anonymous Sharecropper, Elbert County, Georgia, ca. 1900

On January 1, 1867 in Marshall County, Mississippi, Cooper Hughes and Charles Roberts entered into an agreement. In their contract with landowner I.G. Bailey, Hughes and Roberts, both formerly enslaved men, agreed to work 40 acres of corn and 20 acres of cotton on Bailey’s land, along with “all other work…necessary to be done to keep [the farm] in good order,” for the duration of 1867. In exchange for their labor, Hughes, Roberts and their families would be “furnished” with stipends of meat, a mule for plowing, a plot of land to grow a garden, separate cabins and one-third and one-half of the corn and cotton crops respectively.

On that first day of 1867, Hughes and Roberts joined a growing number of newly freed African Americans turning toward a new agricultural arrangement in the South. It would come to be called “sharecropping.” In the decades that followed, sharecropping would grow into what scholar Wesley Allen Riddle called the “predominant capital-labor arrangement” in the region, defining how hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners made a living and supported their families. But once up and running, sharecropping itself would deny the formerly enslaved their rights and liberties as free American citizens for nearly one hundred years.

Sharecropper "Mother Lane" Pulaski County, Arkansas,1937, United States Resettlement Administration, photographer Ben by Shahn, Library of Congress

What is Sharecropping?

Sharecropping is a system by which a tenant farmer agrees to work an owner’s land in exchange for living accommodations and a share of the profits from the sale of the crop at the end of the harvest.

The system emerged after the Civil War, when the southern economy lay in ruins. With the Confederate monetary system wiped out, farm land decimated, and slavery abolished under the 13th Amendment, access to labor and capital was extremely limited among Southern landowners. For former slaves, federal proposals to redistribute land fell apart in the 1860s, leaving millions without the promises of full citizenship guaranteed to them by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

Pitched as a solution for both groups, sharecropping was presented to the formerly enslaved as land ownership by proxy. It put an end to work in “gangs” under an overseer, while keeping Black workers within the agricultural sector, preferably on the same land where they had been held captive, and incentivizing high crop yields, benefitting landowners. But even though the old plantation system had changed and some day-to-day activities were delegated to sharecroppers, sharecropping proved a fundamentally unequal arrangement, organized to keep Black farmers from ever achieving economic or social mobility.

As writer Doug Blackmon notes, many white southerners after Emancipation were determined not to pay for something they had once had for free—Black labor.

Many landowners at the end of the Civil War were furious at the idea of paying Black workers whom they’d owned only months before. As a result, landowners developed systems adjacent to slavery. On the plantations, this took the form of sharecropping, though the transformation did not happen overnight.

Black Americans in the South were eager to exercise their newfound freedoms after the war. As historian Wesley Allen Riddle writes, “the most basic and symbolic” of these freedoms was “mobility” itself. The formerly enslaved left their plantations in droves, some looking for work in the South’s devastated cities, while others looked for—and were given by the Union Army—vacant land on which to raise a farm. But work in cities was hard to come by. Only about 4 percent of Freedmen were able to find work in southern cities after the war, and many who came there were relegated to shantytowns of the formerly enslaved. As for those that were given vacant lands by the army, they were forced out when President Andrew Johnson canceled Field Order No. 15 in the fall of 1865, returning these properties to their white owners.

While many formerly enslaved did leave the plantations after the war, many others could not. Those trying to leave faced horrific violence and intimidation from their former owners. As Union General Carl Schurz reported in his testimony to Congress in 1865, “In many instances, negroes who walked away from plantations, or were found upon the road, were shot or otherwise severely punished.”

With land ownership all but closed to them, and urban service work extremely limited, many Freedmen had little choice but to return to the plantations by the end of the 1860s. Their motives for this were mixed. Though economic pressures were strong, many wanted to reunite with loved ones who had been sold during slavery, and saw some appeal in working in an agricultural sector that they were familiar with.

Twenty to 50 acre plots, a cabin to live in and farming supplies were promised to them, all in exchange for about 50 percent of their harvest. Freedmen envisioned a self-sustained life working a plot of land, raising a garden, and providing for their families as they wanted. But these hopes were dashed as the pitfalls of sharecropping quickly became clear.

Sharecroppers, Pulaski County, Arkansas. 1937, photographer Ben by Shahn, United States Resettlement Administration, Library of Congress

Life as a Sharecropper

By design, sharecropping deprived Black farmers of economic agency or mobility. Although they were no longer legally enslaved, sharecroppers were kept in place by debt. As their income was dependent on both the profits from the sale of the crop and the whims of the landowners, sharecroppers had to find means to sustain themselves during the rest of the year. They were forced to purchase food, seed, clothing and other goods on credit, typically from a plantation “commissary” owned by the landlord.

At the end of the harvest, when revenue from the crop was “settled up,” the sharecroppers’ portion of the profits was calculated against their debts. As a result, sharecroppers often ended the year owing their landlords money. What could not be paid off was carried into the next year, creating a cycle of indebtedness that was often impossible to break.

Sharecroppers in debt to their landlord were subject to laws that tied them to the land. If they attempted to move, any new tenancy contracts they signed with other landlords could be voided by their existing ones. If they ran away, they could be brought back to their landlord in chains, and made to work as a prisoner for no pay at all.

Even if sharecroppers did not try to leave, they still faced massive obstacles in achieving any kind of solvency. For instance, many Southern states limited how and to whom sharecroppers could sell their part of the crop. In Alabama, cotton had to be sold and transported during the day, and could only be purchased by a state-defined “legitimate” merchant. As sharecroppers couldn’t afford to lose a day’s work to take their crop to market, these laws curtailed their ability to sell their product at the best possible price.

In addition, individual freedoms were crushed by tenancy contracts, many of which included arbitrary clauses forbidding alcohol consumption, speaking to other sharecroppers in the fields or allowing visitors on rented land.

Black sharecroppers could not seek redress through the political system either. Despite the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments, the southern “Redemption” that followed the withdrawal of Union troops from the South in 1876-7 ensured that the federal government would not enforce Black voting rights. Black elected officials disappeared from Congress and state legislatures, and attempts at organizing Black voters were brutally suppressed, as in New Orleans in July of 1866, where a convention of Black voters was attacked by a white mob under police protection that killed an estimated 200 people.

Educational opportunities were also sparse. In 1872, white Southerners pressured Congress to abolish the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency designed to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services and land to newly freed African Americans. With the dissolution of the Bureau, few resources remained for the approximately 80 percent of Black people who were illiterate.

Sharecropping, with its prohibitive restrictions on physical and economic mobility, its use of violence and intimidation and its emphasis on maximum production, denied Black Southerners the ability to gain wealth, to exercise the freedom granted them by Emancipation and to gain the education they were deprived of during enslavement. The system existed, in conjunction with other institutions, to exploit Black labor at a minimum “relative loss” to white landowners while keeping the Black population underfoot.

As Black sharecropper Ed Brown said of his experience, “hard work didn’t get me nowhere.”

Sharecropper's cabin, Southeast Missouri Farms. 1938, photographer Russell Lee, Library of Congress

Sharecropping’s Decline and Legacy

After dominating the southern agricultural economy for decades, sharecropping was, like most other farming practices, upended by the rise of new technologies. While these changes were delayed by the Great Depression, sharecropping had become obsolete in many areas of the South by the mid-twentieth century. With increased mechanization, white planters’ demand for Black labor dried up.

Also during this time, Jim Crow obstructions to Black enfranchisement, as well as state-sanctioned violence against Black people, were directly challenged by the Civil Rights Movement and the landmark legislation it helped enact. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 deconstructed de jure segregation across the South in housing and public accommodation, while empowering the federal government to secure the right to vote for Black Southerners.

As scholars Paru Shah and Robert S. Smith note, enfranchisement, desegregation and the decline of sharecropping weakened “the broader agenda of White Supremacy to crush African American socioeconomic mobility,” but did not destroy it. The effects of centuries of Black economic and social oppression, represented in part by sharecropping, are still felt today. Limited access to capital, to mobility, and to representation during Jim Crow and before it denied Black Americans the ability to save, invest or accumulate wealth, concentrating inherited fortunes in the hands of white families and shaping the present class makeup.

For nearly a century, sharecropping defined Southern agriculture and hindered Black economic advancement. The system reflected a multidude of attempts by the white power structure to keep Black workers stagnant, achieving this through intimidation, physical violence and exploitation. Ultimately, aided by organized action, shifting technological and economic conditions and the determination of sharecroppers themselves, the oppressive reality of sharecropping ended. But in the endemic inequities of American political and economic life, its legacy persists.

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