Sharecropping was an economic system that existed before the Civil War and throughout the world. Both white and African Americans became sharecroppers. This system was comprised of sharecroppers renting farmable land from farmers, such as plantation owners, who owned large patches of land.

What is the origin of sharecropper?

The word sharecropper, an American invention from the 1880s, comes from the fact that these farmers would share their crops in return for the use of the land. This system became widespread in the southern states of the US after the Civil War, and it was in large part influenced by the end of slavery.

What is sharecropping and how did it come to be?

By the early 1870s, the system known as sharecropping had come to dominate agriculture across the cotton-planting South. Under this system, Black families would rent small plots of land, or shares, to work themselves; in return, they would give a portion of their crop to the landowner at the end of the year.