sharecropping

Cultural  

1. A system of farming that developed in the South after the Civil War, when landowners, many of whom had formerly held slaves, lacked the cash to pay wages to farm laborers, many of whom were former slaves. The system called for dividing the crop into three shares — one for the landowner, one for the worker, and one for whoever provided seeds, fertilizer, and farm equipment.

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sharecropping

Born to sharecropping parents in North Carolina in 1904, Kittrell was the eighth of nine children.

From Scientific American ● Oct. 26, 2023

Born in Tennessee into a sharecropping family, she first found prominence as one of the backing singers for her husband's band The Kings of Rhythm.

From BBC ● May 24, 2023

From sharecropping SB Nation team blogs to credulous Huffington Post fellowships, the digital media sector was once singularly financed by their toil.

From Slate ● Apr. 12, 2023

We learn of the exploitative practice of sharecropping and how it effectively replaced the function of slavery in the Alabama region.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2022

It was called sharecropping, and it involved black families raising and harvesting crops for white landowners in exchange for a humble place to live and a meager share of the crops.

From "1919 The Year That Changed America" by Martin W. Sandler