A COTTON FIELD MAKES A PRETTY PAINTING BUT LONG HOURS AND LOW PAY DO NOT PAINT A PRETTY PICTURE. When slavery ended, sharecropping was the economic system that was developed to give plantation owners maximum control over their tenants, both black and white. The plantation owners owned all the houses, stores, and gins that made up the plantation system. Even with legal freedom, poor people had no way to provide housing, food, etc. for their families without being a part of the plantation economy. Sharecropping was a non-cash economy where tenants were given a house, land to farm, credit to buy necessities at the plantation store, and seed, etc. to produce a crop. When crops were sold the tenant got 50% of the crop's sales price less what he owed the plantation store. This system seldom produced cash income for the tenant after bills were paid. Moving to another plantation was generally not possible without permission and the lack of cash money made it very hard to get out of a system that was stacked against the tenant's best interest. There is no doubt that many plantation owners percieved themselves as being kind and genuinely caring about the families who lived on their property, but in looking back, it is hard to see how real kindness and caring can exist in a system that was lacking in freedom and economic fairness.
In trying to understand what went on, I look on days of segregation and wonder how so many educated, ethical, good people that I knew, did not question the segregation of society. When Dr. King and others protested non-violently, then whites and blacks had to really look at water hoses and police dogs used against people asking for only equal and fair treatment. Sadly, it took overt cruelty and abuse to make us see the covert violence that was enforcing the customs and mores of Southern life and society.
