#sharecroppers

[akonoadham]

[arctic-hands]

On a cold December morning in 1931, a short, elderly Black woman set out on a 24km (15-mile) walk from her homestead in Alabama, United States, on a quest for justice. The long trek to the court in Selma was no small undertaking for a person in her mid-70s. But Matilda McCrear was determined to go and make her legal claim for compensation for the horrors that she and her family had been through.

Until her death 85 years ago on January 13, 1940, Matilda was the last surviving passenger on the last-ever slave ship bound from the West African coast to North America in late 1859...

Her story began many decades before and thousands of miles away from that sharecropping homestead. Originally named Abake – “born to be loved by all” – the girl later renamed Matilda by her American “owner” came into the world circa 1857, among the Tarkar people of the West African interior.

In 1859, at the age of two, little Abake was captured along with her mother (later renamed Grace), her three older sisters and some other relatives, by troops of the Kingdom of Dahomey, located in what is now Benin. Torn away from the rest of their family, they were victims of an age-old regional warfare which underpinned an equally ancient but persistent trade in slavery reaching across North and East Africa, the Ottoman Empire and eventually the Americas...

...Foster’s ship, Clotilda – a two-masted schooner, 26 metres (86 feet) in length – is now infamous as the last ship known to have carried slaves across the Atlantic to North America. By this time it was an illegal journey, for while slavery continued across the southeast of the US (and in parts of South America), the importation of slaves had been prohibited since 1808. The Clotilda set sail from Ouidah late in the year, purportedly carrying lumber – the 11-man crew being promised double their normal wage to keep quiet about the true contents, as per an entry in Foster’s journal.

Their route across the Atlantic was known as the “Middle Passage”, making up the second part of a triangular trade route connecting Europe, Africa and the Americas. Ships carried weapons and manufactured goods from Europe to the “slave coast” of West Africa on the first part of the round trip; in the Middle Passage, that cargo was traded for enslaved Africans who were transported to the US and South America, where they were usually sold by auction; and on the final course, the vessels returned to Europe usually laden with cotton, tobacco and sugarcane...

...Foster navigated the Clotilda, now carrying 108 slaves, into the port of Mobile, Alabama under cover of darkness in early 1860. He had it towed up the Mobile River to Twelvemile Island, where the captive Africans were transferred to a river steamboat. Foster wrote in his journal that the Clotilda was then burned to destroy any evidence...

...At Twelvemile Island, Abake, her mother and her 10-year-old sister were handed over by Foster to one of the financial backers of Clotilda, a wealthy plantation owner by the name of Memorable Creagh.

In another heartbreaking separation, Abake’s two other sisters (whose names are unknown) were sent elsewhere, never to be seen again – a typically brutal fate for so many of those regarded as a mere commodity...

...Matilda was still a small child when the Civil War broke out in the US in April 1861. Alabama, along with Virginia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, seceded from the US and formed the Confederate States of America – on the grounds that the institution of slavery, the lifeblood of southern economies, was threatened by the federal government in Washington

President Abraham Lincoln made his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring that all enslaved people in the Confederate states were free. This had no immediate effect on Matilda and her family, as the Civil War continued to rage. But when the Confederates were defeated on June 19, 1865, Matilda and her family were liberated...

...But after 1865, freed slaves did not find themselves in a friendly world. Many white Americans reacted with indignant fury to the idea of Black people being their equals. In a harsh and unwelcoming world, there were few options for uneducated ex-slaves other than to remain on the plantations as “sharecroppers” – a system whereby a tenant farmed a portion of land in exchange for a share of the crop. Sharecropping often involved contracts that trapped tenants in debt and poverty and which in practice was not far removed from actual slavery.

Upon her emancipation, Matilda and her family thus became supposedly free people. But, as Martin Luther King Jr pointed out in a 1968 sermon, “Emancipation for the Negro was only a proclamation. It was not a fact. The Negro still lives in chains: the chains of economic slavery, the chains of social segregation, the chains of political disenfranchisement.”

During the post-Civil War period of “Reconstruction”, many new federal laws promoting racial equality were quickly met by local state measures designed to keep Black people “in their place” and ensure that white people remained ascendant. This is seen in the reaction, at the state level, to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the US Constitution.

The 13th Amendment of 1865 officially ended slavery in all US states and territories. Formerly enslaved people were legally freed, while the Freedmen’s Bureau was established to aid freed slaves through the provision of food, housing, medical aid, schooling and legal support.

To counter this, southern states, including Matilda’s home of Alabama, enacted the so-called “Black Codes”, curtailing the right of African Americans to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land or move freely in public spaces. The Black Codes forced many Black people into newly exploitative labour arrangements such as sharecropping.

A central element of the Black Codes was “vagrancy” laws. Through a system known as “convict leasing”, many African-American boys and men were arrested for minor offences such as vagrancy, imprisoned, and then leased out to work for private businesses. This created a new system of forced labour which again was little more than slavery. Convict leasing was legally rooted in the so-called “exception clause” of the 13th Amendment which states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”

Convict leasing is prevalent in the US to this very day, with most working prisoners – still overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic – being paid only a few cents per hour. And even upon their release, ex-convicts have always faced immense hurdles to finding employment, getting credit, doing business or buying property due to their prison records...

...Matilda later entered a common-law partnership with a German-born man called Jacob Schuler and had a total of 14 children, 10 of whom survived into adulthood. What befell the other four is unknown. Whether she was prevented from marrying her partner by the ban on interracial marriage, or chose that arrangement, is also not known. In any case, Matilda appears not to have benefitted financially from the relationship, as she remained a sharecropper, living in the vicinity of Selma, Alabama, for most of her working life. At some point, she changed her surname from Creagh to McCrear, perhaps to distance herself from her enslaver and as an assertion of her own identity. Over the generations, the family surname has seen a number of further variations, including Crear, Creah, Creagher and McCreer...

...The Selma Times-Journal news story provides a vivid description of Matilda: “She walks with a vigorous stride. Her kinky hair is almost white and is plaited in small tufts and with bright-coloured string … Her voice is low and husky, but clear. Age shows most in her eyes … yet her … skin is firm and smooth.”

The article went on to relate that “Tildy has vigor and spirit in spite of her years … endurance and a natural aptitude for agriculture inherited from the Tarkar tribe, made [her] a thrifty farmer.”

Durkin writes that Matilda’s story is particularly remarkable “because she resisted what was expected of a Black woman in the US South in the years after emancipation. She did not get married. Instead, she had a decades-long common-law marriage … Even though she left West Africa when she was a toddler, she appears throughout her life to have worn her hair in a traditional Yoruba style, a style presumably taught to her by her mother.”...

...John Crear, a retired hospital administrator and community leader now in his late 80s, was born in the house Matilda resided in, and her funeral is one of his earliest memories. His grandmother’s strong character apparently passed into family lore. “I was told she was quite rambunctious”, he said.

He discovered more about Matilda when he and his wife carried out some research of their own into the family history. “I had no idea she’d been on the Clotilda”, he said. “It came as a real surprise. Her story gives me mixed emotions because if she hadn’t been brought here, I wouldn’t be here. But it’s hard to read about what she experienced.”

Matilda waited all her life for some form of justice and it would be another 14 years before the civil rights movement began to challenge the systemic racism she faced. Iconic leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X pointed out the hypocritical gap between the ideals of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and the actual lived reality of African Americans.

In a 1964 speech, Malcolm X demanded: “… our right on this earth … to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society … which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”

Although Matilda missed out on witnessing any of this, her grandson was active in the civil rights movement. “You can read about slavery and be detached from it,” he told National Geographic. “But when it’s your family that is involved, it becomes up close and very real.” During the Civil Rights movement, he was arrested and imprisoned on charges of assault and battery – for the offence of stopping a white man who attempted to stuff a live snake down his throat.

Indeed, many civil rights campaigners faced extreme violence from the police and the National Guard, leaving many injured, imprisoned or even dead, as in the case of both Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X.

But their sacrifices were not in vain. By the mid-1960s, the entire plethora of Jim Crow statutes had been taken down. Segregation in public schools was deemed unconstitutional in the 1954 case of Brown v Board of Education; discriminatory electoral practices such as literacy tests and grandfather clauses were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and all other forms of segregation and employment discrimination were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

These were statutory measures aiming to eradicate prejudice in the official sphere. However positive their effect, deeper-rooted racism at the societal level remains a feature of US life.

...

This is just excerpts from the article. I want everyone to read it in whole. The last surviving (official) chattel slave in the United States only died in nineteen forty. My grandmother--who's still alive--was a teenager at the time. This isn't ancient history, this is all too fresh and lingering.

[federer7]

Son of Sharecropper. Mississippi Country, Arkansas. 1935

Photo: Arthur Rothstein- Library of Congress

[travsd]

Erskine Caldwell: Beyond Tobacco Road

A look today at the much-neglected progressive Southern author Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987), born 120 years ago today. Caldwell was decidedly not neglected in his own time; that’s the whole point. His most popular books and adaptations thereof broke records; we’ve had dozens of occasions to mention his most famous one on this blog. To sell that point, we’ll talk about the famous works first, and…

[ausetkmt]

ATHENS, Ala. — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was born about 40 miles from his great-great-grandfathers’ Alabama cotton farms, worked by slaves a 100 years before.

Like so many long-standing Southern white families, McConnell's forebearers built their wealth with free slave labor and cheap land. Two of his great-great-grandfathers owned more than a dozen slaves, census records reviewed by the USA TODAY Network show.

The Kentucky Republican has known of his family's slave-owning past since at least 1994, when he wrote a letter to a Limestone County judge requesting information about his great-great-grandfather James McConnell, a slave owner, and the settlement of his ancestor's estate.

But his 2016 memoir, “The Long Game,” contains no mention that the "colorful McConnells” he wrote about owned slaves, NBC reported. 

As a child during segregation, McConnell lived on the white side of Athens, where black residents were only allowed to visit for work and were typically paid very low wages.

While Kentucky's senior senator has consistently condemned slavery and racism throughout his long political career, his vocal opposition to slavery reparations in any form has fueled the growing national debate about whether African Americans deserve restitution for enduring centuries of economic exploitation.

"I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago when none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” McConnell said in June. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African American president.”

Mitch McConnell:We paid for 'sin of slavery' by electing Obama

McConnell’s remarks, which made national headlines, came the day before a rare congressional hearing in which Democratic leaders and celebrities sought support for a bill that would establish a committee to “study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations.”

McConnell did not respond this week to a USA TODAY Network request for additional comment about why he opposes reparations despite the lasting economic damages African Americans suffered from slavery and segregation. 

Records about the McConnell family shed light on the history of the region that residents say is still shaped by the legacy of slavery.

The senator’s family history could be a case study in the way many whites built lasting wealth in part by exploiting the labor of enslaved African Americans.

The enduring legacy of that history lies in the balance sheets, supporters of reparations contend. On average, black Americans own roughly one-tenth of the amount of wealth that white families do, according to Federal Reserve statistics.

David Malone, whose family has roots as deep as the McConnell family in the Limestone County area of northern Alabama, believes reparations are a good idea.

Malone's great-grandparents were slaves, and he remembers his grandparents, who were sharecroppers, telling him how white farm owners kept them poor and in debt.

"I know it would be almost impossible to pay everybody related to slaves," Malone said. "When you think of how many people’s lives were lost working for nothing for 400 years, I would agree it should be done. But how it should be done I don’t know."

'Alabama Fever' drew McConnell's forebearers

In northern Alabama, the McConnell family’s slave-owning history is a common one among longtime white families.

His maternal and paternal great-great-grandparents, James McConnell and Richard H. Daley, moved from North Carolina and Virginia during the “Alabama Fever” years in the early and mid-1800s, census records show.

They were farmers and may have brought slaves with them when they moved, as many white families did.

It was a boom period for the cotton industry, fueled by the revolutionary invention of the cotton gin in 1793, and Alabama had plenty of cheap, fertile land.

In 1838, James McConnell, Mitch McConnell’s paternal great-great-grandfather, bought more than 600 acres, according to Limestone County property records.

The lush land was near the Tennessee River in the northwesternmost corner of Alabama, on the Tennessee state line.

"In that time, the Tennessee River was raging, and there was fertile land that you could pretty much buy for nothing,” said James Walker, a local historian and retired teacher whose ancestors were slaves and sharecroppers in the area. "Alabama became a state in 1819, and the Civil War started in 1861. So, for 40 years or so, slavery was big in Limestone County. Slaves outnumbered the whites."

In 1850, about 17,000 people lived in Limestone County, Alabama, and 8,500 were slaves, said county archivist Rebekah Davis.

"There were a few very wealthy planter families that came here from Virginia and the Carolinas who owned a very large number of slaves," Davis said. "There’s still a lot of black Malones in this county because there was a white Malone who owned lots and lots of slaves. It’s still the most common black name in Limestone County."

Davis, part of a group working to preserve the only black school in Limestone County for decades after the Civil War, said economic disparities persist, but she doesn’t support paying reparations for the decisions of people who lived more than 100 years ago.

In some cases, descendants of slaves have prospered, she noted. The Bridgeforth family of Limestone County is one of America’s most successful black farming families.

"They did have to start one foot behind, and the black section of town is economically depressed," Davis said. "But I don’t think you can equitably say: ‘Your ancestor was worth this much.'"

Opinion:McConnell is clueless when it comes to slavery and how it still affects us

The McConnell family slaves

After NBC News reported earlier this week that McConnell's great-great-grandfathers had owned 14 slaves, he responded by pointing out that President Barack Obama’s ancestors also were slave owners.

"You know, once again I find myself in the same position as President Obama," he said. "We both oppose reparations, and both are the descendants of slaveholders."

A USA TODAY Network review of census documents and local property and accounting records show that slave ownership was passed down through generations and persisted in the McConnell family through the Civil War.

Richard Daley, McConnell’s maternal great-great-grandfather, reported owning five young female slaves in the 1850 U.S. Census Slave Schedule.

But he said that four "mulatto," or mixed race, slaves — ages 20, 18, 4 and 2 — were escaped fugitives. One 22-year-old black woman remained at his farm, the document shows.

In the 1860 census, Daley reported owning another five slaves — a 30-year-old "mulatto" female, an 11-year-old "mulatto" female and two "mulatto" boys ages 7 and 10 or 12.

They also escaped, according to the document, but one 39-year-old black female slave remained.

The names of slaves and receipts of sale transactions are difficult to trace. Slaves either moved with families from other states into Alabama or were purchased at auctions in Montgomery.

Josiah and Jane Daley, the parents of Richard Daley, also owned slaves, according to Limestone County Chancery Court records from the mid-1800s. A property dispute mentions their two female slaves, 10-year-old Nancy and 20-year-old Eliza.

James McConnell, whose farm was next to Daley’s, had four female "mulatto" slaves ages 25, 4, 3 and 1 who all escaped, according to the 1860 census.

But, after the Civil War broke out, James McConnell had numerous slaves, according to his accounts the USA TODAY Network reviewed.

Read more:Sen. Mitch McConnell's family owned 14 slaves in Alabama

$4 for boots; $1,500 for slaves

Mitch McConnell requested some of those records in 1994, nine years after he was first elected to the U.S. Senate.

"I have been researching my family history and would appreciate your assistance,” he wrote in a letter to the Limestone County Archives. “I would like information relating to the settlement of the estate of James McConnell.”

The file the senator requested documented James McConnell’s purchases and sales, administered by his son, Andrew. It served as his will and included a list of heirs to receive payments upon his death.

In 1860, James McConnell paid $4 for boots, $1.40 for “lady shoes,” $3 for two bushels of wheat, 75 cents for a long-handle shovel, and $3 for “1 fine hat,” records show.

The accounts also included slave sales during and after the Civil War.

On April 15, 1863, the ledger noted: "To amount received on sale of slaves Confederate state money $1,500."

At the time, the area was occupied by Union Army troops, which included two local black infantry regiments.

After the war, in March 1867, James McConnell recorded: “To amount received of Elledge by way of compromise of the balance of the amount due on sale of slaves $235.”

Diverging fortunes for blacks and whites 

Mitch McConnell’s family’s prominence is still apparent in Athens, where he lived until the third grade when his family moved for better opportunities.

But there are clear indications that success and equality have come much more slowly for African Americans in Athens.

There is only one black-owned business downtown: The Sweetest Thing Tea Room. 

Black obituaries and funeral notices only recently began being added to the county archives, where white families have long had their loved ones' information recorded.

"Slavery still affects the fortunes of African Americans. On one side of town, there are immaculate lawns and houses with two-car garages," said Walker, the local historian. "On the other side of town, you’ve got rundown shacks and terrible lawns."

Walker remembers segregated water fountains, restrooms and movie theaters.

“It was terrible,” he said. “I never went in the white restroom, but, in the colored restroom, there was paper on the floor, and it was never clean.”

Walker’s great-grandfather escaped slavery and became a soldier before establishing his own farm. But the family struggled, and after graduating from Morehouse College, Walker faced a choice of farming cotton or going into the military.

He joined the Army in the Vietnam War and retired about two decades later as a lieutenant colonel. He went on to teach African American history.

"The Jewish people received reparations from the Holocaust, and Japanese people received money for their internment during World War II,” said Walker, who supports reparations. "This country is built primarily on the backs of African Americans. And the primary difference between African Americans and European Americans today is economics.”

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell’s former home with its large windows, porch and white picket fence stands on a tree-lined street near the town square.

A neighbor across the street remembered playing with water guns with McConnell as children, according to an Athens News Courier article.

Richard Martin, who is white and about the age as the 77-year-old Kentucky senator, remembers segregation differently. His family also has deep roots in Limestone County.

“When I was a little boy, we had a little club and initiation was you had to drink out of a black fountain,” Martin said. “We thought it was something, that we were tough.

"I was the little white boy who had everything. We had African American folks working for us. But segregation cheated me, too."

Martin said he didn’t make any black friends until he joined the Army, and he wishes it had happened earlier.

Martin opposes the idea of reparations. But he serves on the board working to preserve the former all-black Trinity High School, which was founded by a missionary in 1865 and provided the rare opportunity for black children to get an education. It’s now a community and event center.

‘Watch him, don’t trust him’

Nowadays, race relations are mostly cordial in Limestone County but for a few rare blowups.

Cotton is still a popular crop to farm in the area, but technology has replaced the need for most human labor.

In April, a brawl erupted at Athens High School after a parent started a "Black Lives Matter" chant on campus. When police responded, a fight broke out. A video showed officers hitting several students.

The incident prompted gossip around town for a few days, locals said. But they viewed it as an outlier.

Limestone County Probate Judge Charles Woodroof, who holds the title McConnell’s great-uncle once had, shares a similar family history. His family moved from Virginia to farm the cheap land in the 1800s, and they owned slaves.

But to Woodroof, reparations are an archaic idea.

"I vaguely remember a couple of situations where there might have been two water fountains," Woodroof said. "I know from being in this position and being an attorney here that a lot of people have been highly successful — both African Americans and whites.

"We’re so many generations beyond that. It was part of our history, and we learned it in school. But I don’t experience it.”

But for many descendants of slaves in the area, reparations would bring some long-overdue economic justice, they say.

“It would mean that somebody has finally agreed that we deserve something, and I would give it to my grandkids,” said Malone, whose relatives were slaves and sharecroppers.

"My grandmother never taught me to hate. But she was treated so bad by the white man. So, she told me: ‘Watch him. Don’t trust him, because if there’s something you’ve got that he wants, he will beat you out of it.'"

Opinion:This is how reparations could work, but we're not holding our breath

[whitesinhistory]

On the night of September 30, 1919, approximately 100 Black farmers attended a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America at a church in Phillips County, Arkansas. Many of the farmers were sharecroppers on white-owned plantations in the area, and the meeting was held to discuss ways they could organize to demand fairer payments for their crops.

Black labor unions such as the Progressive Farmers were deeply resented among white landowners throughout the country because unions threatened to weaken white aristocratic power. The union also made efforts to subvert racial divisions in labor relations and had hired a white attorney to negotiate with land owners for better cotton prices.

Knowing that Black union organizing often attracted opposition, Black men stood as armed guards around the church while the Phillips County meeting took place. When a group of white people from the Missouri-Pacific Railroad attempted to intrude and spy on the meeting, the guards held them back and a shootout erupted. At least two white men were killed, and enraged white mobs quickly formed.

The mobs descended on the nearby Black town of Elaine, Arkansas, destroying homes and businesses and attacking any Black people in their path over the coming days. Terrified Black residents, including women, children, and the elderly, fled their homes and hid for their lives in nearby woods and fields. A responding federal troop regiment claimed only two Black people were killed, but many reports challenged the white soldiers’ credibility and accused them of participating in the massacre. Today, historians estimate hundreds of Black people were killed in the massacre.

When the violence was quelled, 67 Black people were arrested and charged with inciting violence, while dozens more faced other charges. No white attackers were prosecuted, but 12 Black union members convicted of riot-related charges were sentenced to death. The NAACP, along with local African American lawyer Scipio Africanus Jones, represented the men on appeal and successfully obtained reversals of all of their death sentences.

[gogetterwriter]

Leaving Henry: The Poignant Life Journey | Excerpt from Chapter One

The Author and her Mother Hello Everyone! My latest novel, Leaving Henry will be available on Amazon.com any day now. It’s been a long road writing my mother’s amazing story, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you. Below is an excerpt from chapter one! Enjoy and don’t forget to purchase your copy on Amazon next month! CHAPTER ONE I woke up on my fifth birthday wet and smelling like pee.…

[thevitalportal]

The Jordan side of my family were sharecroppers. My grandfather Willie Bo Jordan made it through the third grade. He then went to work in the fields with his Mother. His great-grandchildren are Ph.D. and business owner, another a Television producer for an NPR station and Photographer, and the other a graphic designer for a national magazine and a multi-instrument musician. And still we rise.

[yearningforunity]

Man eating on the porch. Clarksdale, Ms. - 1937

Photographer: Dorthea Lange

[henk-heijmans]

Twelve-year-old son of a cotton sharecropper near Cleveland, Mississippi, 1937 - Dorothea Lange (1895 – 1965), American

[semioticapocalypse]

Arthur Rothstein. Sharecropper’s Wife and Child. Arkansas. 1935

Follow my new AI-related project «Collective memories»

[luvsimskaos]

While the majority of the family helps around the property, Cato finds himself on the sidelines. Despite being relativity healthy as a toddler, it seems his weak immune systems rears it's head after aging up.

There are certain days when a sickness renders him close to immobile and he'll have to spend his day in bed. Those are the bad days when Cato will try to stop the tears that threaten to escape. His mother will try to comfort him but it still sucks for Cato.

But the worse day are when Cato is healthy enough to walk around and observe the life around him. He'll look outside and see his siblings playing around, enjoying their freedom but he's unable to join. The suffocating feeling dragging him down, it's not fair. Why only him? Why was he the one that got sick so often, why was it his face with the mark that made him even more of an outsider.

The only time Cato can escape the feelings that threaten to drown him is when he's writing. Putting pencil to paper is when he truly feels free, for a moment he almost has a semblance of normalcy. But it's only for a moment before reality pulls him back.

[federer7]

Evicted sharecropper’s wife. Butler County, Missouri, November 1939

Photo: Arthur Rothstein

[ifelllikeastar]

His grandmother gave him the nickname "Muddy" at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby  Deer Creek. Muddy grew up in the cotton country of the Mississippi Delta on the Stovall plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi. He taught himself to play harmonica and played guitar simply, yet powerfully, proving that three chords played rhythmically and loudly could be as expressive as any tune with more notes and chords. "Waters" was added years later, as he began to play harmonica and perform locally in his early teens.

He had his first introduction to music in church and by the time he was 17 he had purchased his first guitar. "I sold the last horse that we had. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents, I kept seven-fifty and paid about two-fifty for that guitar. It was a Stella and people ordered them from Sears-Roebuck in Chicago."

As a young man, he drove a tractor on the sharecropped plantation, and on weekends he operated the cabin in which he lived as a “juke house,” where visitors could party and drink moonshine whiskey made by himself. He eagerly absorbed the classic Delta blues styles of Robert Johnson, Son House, and others while developing a style of his own.

Muddy Waters was born McKinley Morganfield and died on April 30, 1983 at the age of 70.

[delafiseaseses]

I thought about the NCR Sharecropper Farms and Concluded they should not Exist.

Strong opening line, 'ey? How's ol' Delafiseaseses gonna justify that?

Quite easily, actually. Y'see some people misunderstand the NCR Sharecropper Farms, they think it provides food to the Mojave. Not true. It provides food to the NCR, clues in the name, really. Its a Sharecrop, the NCR gets some of the crop and the sharecroppers get the rest of their crop as payment, the portion the NCR takes goes to NCR Military bases. As Romanowski says 'A lot of the crops grown here support the various NCR camps in the region - McCarran, Golf, and Forlorn Hope, to name a few. We can't have wastelanders popping in here for a free meal, so my squad and I are assigned to keep things from going to hell.' and when Romanowski says 'Wastelanders' he means 'people from the Mojave Wasteland' of course.

Do the sharecroppers sell their crops to Mojave citizens? Possibly, but remember all the sharecroppers are NCR citizens brought over by the 'Thaler Act', nobody from the Mojave directly benefits from this arrangement.

You may think 'Well, not like anyone in the Mojave before was using the land.' possibly wrong. While he's not from the Mojave (and is an unrepentant Enclave fascist, but that's irrelevant) Orion Moreno has this to say 'I came out here to get away from them - didn't work out so well. Next thing I know, I'm squatting in "their" land. Never mind that I'd already been living here for years.', and when he says 'years' he could mean up to over 3 decades. So we've got to wonder... was the land unoccupied? Moreno is a stubborn old Enclave soldier, he wouldn't scare easy, he gets harassed by the NCR, as he says when you first meet him 'Bah. Looks like I forgot to lock the doors again. If you're with the NCR, get out. This place is mine, and I'm not leaving.' or, if you am in NCR faction armour 'Look, trooper, I was living in this house long before your farms got set up. Don't even think about evicting me.' most people would be forced off by these tactics. So it is entirely possible the NCR has displaced Mojave residents to set up their precious farm.

Both quests involving the Sharecropper Farm also include a backdrop of NCR vs Mojave Locals. The most obvious is, of course, The White Wash. The Westside Co-Op, an actual local community farming effort (which does have some New Californians, but they're unaffiliated with the NCR), is only surviving because of the syphoning of water from the Sharecroppers by Tom Anderson. The water from the local water system that the NCR took over, I might add. Why do they get to claim ownership of Lake Mead's water and the Vegas water system?

And the second, Hard Luck Blues is more indirect. The NCR isn't at fault at all for this, the Vault 34 Civil War damaged their reactor and that was entirely on them. But the final choice between saving the Vault 34 Survivors or dealing with the radiation leak caused by the Vault 34 Civil War killing the survivors. So it is literally saving an NCR Asset or saving people who for over 200 years have lived in the Mojave.

Now, I'm not saying the Sharecroppers themselves deserve to suffer lower than needed water rations or radiation in their soil. They didn't set this up, they're just working class NCR citizens trying to survive, but, the thing is, the Sharecroppers can just... leave. And they do if these quests are resolved in ways that hurt the Farms.

After the White Wash siding with Anderson/Westside the affected sharecropper Trent Bascom says he's quitting because 'I wouldn't be able to meet the quota, and the NCR would kick me out of my job, anyway. Nah, it's better I get out on my own terms.' and he's even got a plan for his future 'I hear the Brahmin ranchers out in Redding are looking for some hard workers, so I might try there first. I hate working with Brahmin, though.' so, yeah, that sucks for him, but he's got a future. He may not like that future, but its more of a future than the Westsiders have if they lose their Co-Op.

And after Hard Luck Blues you can find some Sharecroppers out front of the Big Horn Saloon in Boulder City. The named member of this group is a woman named Anne, she has this to say 'We're heading back home. I hope our troops do the same. This land can't be saved. Trying to grow crops in this heat, with so little water, is bad enough, but now we've got radiation seeping into the farmlands east of New Vegas. We're done. Let the people of these hell-hole deal with their problems, I say.' and, y'know, I agree. Maybe the people of the Mojave should deal with their problems and not have a military force from somewhere else claiming their land and water? Especially since the area is still disputed at this time. They're literally fighting a bloody war which they have a 3/4 chance of losing during all of this.

To put this all in a shorter way: The NCR Sharecropper Farm's existence is an example of NCR colonialism.

Like, it's textbook fucking colonialism. They forcefully took over part of a land that's not theirs, brought in their own people to 'settle' the land and violently keep the locals out of it all, who suffer because of it. I've said before that the NCR playacts the USA and they certainly playact it accurately.

So, unless you're doing an NCR playthrough, I'd say its probably best to side against the Sharecropper Farm in every instance because the NCR Sharecropper Farms should not exist. It sucks for the Sharecroppers, but they'd be out of the job when the NCR withdraws anyway. Probably best for everyone if they get out before the NCR Military does.