Mississippi Sharecroppers: Historic Photos Reveal an Era of Hardship and Poverty

With the abolition of slavery after the civil war, plantation owners in the south were forced to find a new source of labor for their fields. They found a way to do this by exploiting the poor, both black and white, as a source of cheap labor. Thus began the era of the sharecropper in Mississippi.

Twelve year old son of a cotton sharecropper near Cleveland, Mississippi, 1937Photo byDorothea Lange (via Library of Congress)

Wife of sharecropper, Lee County, Mississippi, 1937Photo byDorothea Lange (via Library of Congress)

Sharecropping in the south was a system where a farmer was allowed to grow a crop on someone else's land. Most of the farmers grew cotton, corn, and sometimes crops such as sweet potatoes. Cotton was by far the biggest cash crop. At harvest, the farmer had to share the money he made from that crop with the landowner - thus, the term sharecropper.

Sharecropper's cabin, cotton and corn, near Jackson, Mississippi, 1937Photo byDorothea Lange (via Library of Congress)

Sharecropper's house with sweet potatoes and cotton on the porch. Knowlton Plantation, Perthshire, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi, 1939Photo byWolcott, Marion Post (via Library of Congress)

The landowner often provided the sharecropper the means to plant the crop which sometimes included seeds, tools, and a mule. Some sharecroppers were also allowed to live on the land if there was any kind of house or shelter there. However, these supplies and shelter were rarely free. Out of his share of the money, the sharecropper often had to pay a whole year's worth of rent plus pay back the money for the supplies to the landowner. Most sharecroppers barely broke even. During a year with a poor harvest, the sharecropper unusually ended up in debt to the landowner and obligated to stay on years longer. The cycle of poverty continued.

Sharecropper plowing up sweet potatoes near Laurel, Mississippi, 1938Photo byLee, Russell (via Library of Congress)

Sharecropper and wife. Mississippi. They have no tools, stock, equipment, or garden, 1937Photo byDorothea Lange (via Library of Congress)

Sharecropping was hard work for the entire family. My great-grandparents were sharecroppers in northwest Alabama. My grandmother told me many stories about her and her siblings working in the hot fields all day picking cotton. Everyone was expected to do their part when the crop was ready to harvest.

Son of a cotton sharecropper, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, 1935Photo byRothstein, Arthur (via Library of Congress)

Family of sharecropper working in fields, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, 1935Photo byRothstein, Arthur (via Library of Congress)

Fifty-seven year old sharecropper woman. Hinds County, Mississippi. Explaining how black beads are good for heart trouble. 1937Photo byDorothea Lange (via Library of Congress)

During the Great Depression, the government began a program that hurt sharecroppers more than ever. The government actually paid landowners to let large swaths of their land lie dormant for a season. This was done to raise the price of cotton which had plummeted from overproduction. The boll weevil came along at this time, too, and destroyed entire crops. This left thousands of sharecroppers with no place to live and farm. For the ones who were able to farm, it left them in more debt and poverty than ever before.

Children of evicted sharecropper, now living on Sherwood Eddy cooperative plantation, 1937Photo byDorothea Lange (via Library of Congress)

Sharecropper families, Mississippi Bottoms, 1939Photo byLee, Russell (via Library of Congress)

By WWII, sharecropping had mostly ended in the south. Many farmers had completely gone bankrupt during the Great Depression and machinery was replacing manual labor in the fields. The economic and social disparity between the wealthy landowners and dirt poor sharecroppers, however, is one which would leave it's effects for generations to come.

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