Black Sharecroppers Were Forced Into Multiple Generations of Poverty
As we mentioned earlier, once these former slaves agreed to sharecropping, it became nearly impossible to escape poverty. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, many of these black sharecropping farmers tried to renegotiate their unfair contracts and were met with violence again. In the South, this scheme continued long after slavery was abolished. It was essentially a loophole that kept these African Americans under the thumbs of the plantation owners. And if they tried to stand up for themselves, they were met with violence. One horrific example happened in 1921, when a plantation owner named John Williams killed 11 of his black farmers, because they were planning to testify against him in court for continuing to put them into slavery-like conditions.