Travis Family aka Sharecroppers on the Watson Farm

Sharecropping enabled the South to maintain the economic power relations

of plantation cotton production after the legal form of slavery was abolished. Here¹s how it worked:

Debt was as central to sharecropping as cotton. Each sharecropping family rented a plot of land from the planter, or landlord, and was loaned a monthly stipend called the furnish to buy food and other necessary items (usually at the plantation commissary, or store) until the crop came in. The landlord also loaned the sharecropper seed money - often at high interest rates - for the cotton seed, tools, fuel, fertilizer and feed (banks wouldn¹t lend to sharecroppers). The cotton was picked by hand in October and November (schools would shut until after the harvest) and taken to the gin where the cotton was separated from its seed, weighed by the landlord, packed into bales, and sold.

 

Around Christmas, the sharecropper would go to the plantation office for the settle. There the manager would first deduct fees and debts - including interest on the furnish and seed money - and then pay the sharecropper his share. In Goin’ to Chicago, Dr. Martin says he and his parents worked for a whole year and cleared $300. Dr. Martin was lucky. After all the deductions taken by the landlord (often calculated fraudulently), many sharecroppers discovered at the settle that they owed the landlord money. Falling ever deeper into debt, they were compelled to pledge the next year¹s crop as payment . . . . . . . . . Thus a system of debt peonage replaced slavery, ensuring a cheap supply of labor to grow cotton and other crops while condemning African Americans to grinding poverty.

 

Some sharecroppers were white, but the great majority were black.