Group items tagged

This website provides the history of sharecropping and tenant farming. It also provides details on the hierarchy of society during the great depression. With migration of African Americans came a surge in need of poor white farmers who took on the job of farming on land which they did not own. Many times, sharecroppers would end up working under contract for years without pay in any form. This way of life was only the beginning of social stratification.

The Historical Text Archive website publishes "articles, books, essays and documents on a broad range of historical subjects". This page deals with the rise and fall of the sharecropping system in America. Although the article is lengthy it has a particularly interesting section concerning the plight of sharecroppers during the Depression era .

I thought this was interesting. It is a copy of a sharecropping agreement many blacks signed once they were free. They agreed to rent land from wealthy owners in return for a portion of the crop. Many blacks were unable to read when they signed these contracts and were unaware of the terms. This specific contract requires the lessor to furnish the mule, land, and other supplies up front and the lessee to pay for them later. It also forces the lessee to gin the cotton on the lessor's farm and is forced to pay a higher price to do so. Contracts like these were made to keep blacks poor. It was a way to keep the blacks thinking they were free, but in the end, working for nothing.

The Encyclopedia of Alabama offers "a reference resource to the history, culture, geography and natural environment" of Alabama. This particular page discusses the history of sharecropping as it evolved from being a way of earning a living for freed slaves to being taken over by "poor whites". It also talks about how sharecroppiing was affected by the Great Depression. This is pertinent to our analysis of the photograph of Allie Mae Burroughs, a sharecroppers wife from the 1930's.

This source discusses a brief history of sharecropping and gives perspective of what sharecropping was like from the perspective of living in Arkansas. I chose to include this link because although it may provide more general information, it can give us insight into what the lives of those Walker Evans photographed were like.