sharecropper
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sharecropper
Explanation
A sharecropper is a tenant farmer, someone who works land that's rented from its owner. Typically, a sharecropper will pay the landowner with part of the harvest, rather than money. 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. There were both black and white sharecroppers well into the 1950s.
Vocabulary lists containing sharecropper
American History I
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March: Book One
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Just Mercy
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“My grandmother was a sharecropper in Arkansas, and I know that this is the same thing,” a man shouts at one point as whistles shrill and a handheld siren wails.
From Slate ● Feb. 11, 2026
Mr. Morrison’s, meanwhile, is on the porch of a Mississippi Delta sharecropper.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 26, 2025
Hamer, a former sharecropper and a leader of the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, objected to the seating of an all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
From Salon ● Aug. 24, 2024
Delia Pettway Thibodeaux is a third-generation Gee’s Bend quilter whose grandmother was a sharecropper and whose bold, rhythmic quilts are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
From Seattle Times ● May 10, 2024
It was the cabin of Jim Trueblood, a sharecropper who had brought disgrace upon the black community.
From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
Duncan was born Ruby Lee Phillips on June 7, 1932, near Tallulah, La., where her parents, Ida Bolden and Joseph Phillips, were sharecroppers on a white-owned plantation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026
My parents were sharecroppers in Arkansas until 1951, when my dad dared stand up to his boss for not paying him a fair wage at the agricultural weigh station.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 2, 2025
"I come from a proud line of sharecroppers and cowboys. My grandfather was buried in his cowboy boots," she shares.
From BBC ● Mar. 1, 2024
His parents, Lemius and Eunice Sonnier, were sharecroppers, and young Joel and his older brother, P.J., picked cotton alongside them from an early age.
From New York Times ● Jan. 26, 2024
When he did not see any change, he checked with other sharecroppers: their plants were dying too.
From "Breaking Through" by Francisco Jiménez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
