At emancipation, many freedmen owned little more than the clothes they wore. Their poverty forced most rural African Americans to become sharecroppers. Asharecropper is a farmer who rents land and pays a share of each year’s crop as rent. Often the landlord supplied a house or at least a shack for the farmer’s family. Sharecroppers hoped to save money and eventually buy land of their own. But success depended on uncertain weather conditions and the ups and downs of crop prices. Even a large crop might not pay the bills if crop prices were low at harvest time. In fact, sharecroppers often became locked in a cycle of debt. AND GIVE ME BRAINLIEST
