Essay On Sharecropping

Although The United States had many accomplishes after the Civil War, such as the abolishment of slavery, millions of African Americans still experienced racism that denied them economic, political, and social rights. One major obstacle black Americans faced was sharecropping. Sharecropping was an agricultural system in which landless people farmed on a section of someone else’s land and received a portion of profit from the sale of crops. Sharecroppers were overwhelming black former slaves, while the landowners were white. This system was unfair because the sharecroppers were forced to buy all of their supplies from the landowners, who inflated their prices to exploit African Americans. Additionally, the sharecroppers were not allowed to see the account books, which hid how the landowners sold their crops for low prices and kept the majority of the money for themselves. This racism in the agricultural industry caused …show more content…
Jim Crow laws enacted in the 1870s aimed to separate the races, deny African Americans of their rights, and keep black people at the bottom of American society. Segregation meant black people could not use the same transportation, schools, hospitals, theaters, or restaurants as white people. Facilities for black people were usually run-down and small, compared to the well-built and adequate services for white people. Although unjust, segregation was lawful as stated in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case that stated it was legal as long as black people had ‘separate but equal’ facilities. Horrifying prejudice was additionally prominent in the hundreds of lynchings that were responsible for countless African Americans’ deaths, created terror among their communities, and robbed them of their humanity. Sharecropping, poll taxes, literacy tests, and segregation display the racism seen in the twentieth racism that denied African Americans of their