After the end of civil war, freed slaves struggled to make a living and prosper. Because there were so few banks left in the South, it was practically impossible for former slaves to get credits to buy farmland. For many freed blacks (and poor whites) the primary vocational option after the war was sharecropping, in which the crop produced was divided between the tenant farmer and the landowner. The labor, worked the owner’s land in return for seed, fertilizer, and supplies and a share of the crop, generally about half. Sharecropping enabled mothers and wives to contribute directly to the family’s income.
The sharecropper-tenant system was horribly inefficient and corrupting. It was, in essence, a post–Civil War version of land slavery. Tenants and landowners developed an intense mistrust of each other. Landlords often cheated the farm workers by not giving them their fair share of the crops. This system also caused profound environmental damage, because tenants had no incentive to take care of farm soil.
