4. Sharecropping Was Rife With Corruption
While the system sounds good on paper, sharecropping was a thinly veiled means to keep African Americans bound to the land and in a position of perpetual servitude. Plantation owners would routinely falsify the accounts to keep the sharecroppers in debt.
For example, an African American worker could grow $500 worth of cotton in one season, all at pretty much no extra expense to the plantation owner. The land and tools necessary were already there, so the $500 was basically free money. But in the account books, he might say that the worker used $700 worth of tools and actually was $200 in debt.
