The painting “Sharecroppers day of Reckoning” shares a piece of the history of sharecropping in Mississippi and across the American southeast.

Sharecropping is a system of labor that replaced slavery in the south after the Civil War. Former slaves, who were unable to find work, could rent land from a plantation to live on and till paying the landowner in the crop. With no means to work the land, sharecroppers often rented supplies and equipment from the landowners often having to pay extremely high-interest rates. Furthermore, landowners often controlled all means of crop production from the type of crop, the processing of it, and the market, leaving the sharecroppers in debt season after season. This cycle forced sharecroppers to remain in debt to the landowners with no way of leaving the plantation or getting out of labor.

This painting depicts a sprawling landscape of cotton fields, with the forefront of the work depicting a cotton gin. We see carts arriving at the gin full of cotton for processing as well as other crops grown in the area for sale, such as watermelon. The title refers to the weighing and ginning of the cotton after which the crop would be given to the landowners as rent for the sharecroppers. The weighing of the season’s crop is referred to as a reckoning by Ms. Alice as these crops acted as a final judgment for many families, determining how much or how little they would struggle in the next season. Alice’s choice in color and composition reflect these somber and suspenseful feelings of the actions taking place. The prominent colors of brown and grays, as well as the crouched, hunched figures, make the point that this painting is not a warm memory of the south but the harsh reality from many families of the time.

The South’s Landless Farmers. Atlanta: Commission on Interracial Cooperation, 1937. Print.

https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/sharecropping/

http://usslave.blogspot.com/2013/01/sharecropping-in-mississippi.html