Concept

Sharecropping

A postwar southern farm-labor system in which freed people rented land -- often on the same plantations where they had been enslaved -- and paid landlords with a share of the crop they grew.

A crop-lien system in which people paid rent on land they farmed (but did not own) with the crops they grew, often as much as half their harvest. Sharecropping favored landlords, discouraged investment in the land, and trapped many farmers in a cycle of debt for generations.