Transcript Sharecropping - Seattle Preparatory School

You are a lawyer for John Dawson,
a sharecropper
 You must advise your client on
whether or not he should agree to it

The Dawson Contract

As you decide on a recommendation, answer the
following questions:
 According to the contract, what is Dawson
responsible for?
 What does the contract stipulate regarding
how long Dawson can use and live on the
land?
 What arrangement is made regarding
supplies?
 How does Solid South secure his payment of
rent and supplies? What might this mean for
Dawson?
 Based on your critique of this contract, is it
fair? Why or why not?
The Dawson Contract
Sharecropping
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Indentured servitude in the post-Civil War South

Reparations
In your own words, define


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Following the Civil War, the Freedmen’s
Bureau was given the authority to divided
confiscated lands into forty-acre plots for rental
and sale to former slaves
“40 acres and a mule”
Summer of 1865—Andrew Johnson ordered
land in federal hands returned to its former
owners
The majority of rural freedmen remained poor
and without property
Land Reform
Congress passed the 13th
Amendment, prohibiting slavery.
 Some freed slaves chose to leave the
plantations; others moved to the
North to seek work or to start their
own businesses.
 Some freed persons decided to stay in
the South.
 What would you do?
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Post-War South
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Many of the freed Black
Southerners who
remained in the South
wanted to work as
FREEDmen.
Many Blacks made
arrangements with their
former masters to plant
the crops that season,
receiving a portion of
the crop as payment.
Such relationships
evolved into tenant
farming and
sharecropping.
Sharecropping Origins

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Landowners were
used to their work
being done for free.
Landowners now had
to get used to dealing
with former slaves as
FREE MEN.
Landowners were
often unfair and
spiteful in their
interactions with
workers.
Could Freed Slaves
Succeed?
The Cycle of Debt
1. Poor whites and
freedmen have no jobs, no
homes, and no money to
buy land.
5. Sharecropper cannot
leave the farm as long as
he is in debt to the
landlord.
4. At harvest time, the
sharecropper owes more to
the landlord than his
share of the crop is worth.
2. Poor whites and
freedmen sign contracts to
work a landlord’s acreage
in exchange for a part of
the crop.
3. Landlord keeps track of
the money that
sharecroppers owe him for
housing and food.