Concept

Crop-Lien System

A credit system in which store owners advanced goods to farmers against a share of their future harvest, at high interest rates that trapped freed people in debt.

A loan system in which store owners extended credit to farmers for the purchase of goods in exchange for a portion of their future crops. High interest rates made it even harder for freed people to gain economic independence, and the system underpinned sharecropping across the postwar South.