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GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government
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U.S. History 1492-1877 11: Sharecropping 1215 Views
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Description:
Sharing is normally a good thing, unless it's paired with "-cropping." Today we'll learn about share-cropping, or really more like "slavery with a new name."
Transcript
- 00:00
if the Black Codes were like slavery in disguise then
- 00:07
sharecropping was like slavery barely even trying to be in disguise. seriously
- 00:12
it was like we're in one of those plastic noses with the glasses and [men in disguises]
- 00:15
mustache. zero efforts. let's travel back in time for a moment to the very end of
- 00:20
the Civil War and Sherman's march to the sea. well general william t sherman led
Full Transcript
- 00:25
his troops into georgia and the carolinas freeing tons of slaves as they [Sherman holding a torch]
- 00:29
went, but by January 1865 they had a problem. refugees. Sherman solution
- 00:35
special field order number 15. This order stated that every family that had [Kids looking happy]
- 00:41
been freed from a plantation would be given some mules and 40 acres of land on
- 00:46
the Georgia coast. beach front property yeah, but they weren't going to be
- 00:50
sunbathing with those mules. still compared to slavery this wasn't a bad [Man hula hooping on a beach]
- 00:54
idea now let's fast forward three months. President Andrew Johnson announced that
- 00:59
all land and probably mules would be given back to the original owners. that
- 01:04
would be the slave owners. ouch. So this left of freedmen with little choice [Guy holding no trespassing sign in a field]
- 01:08
except to sign labor contracts or go back to being landless refugees. so black
- 01:14
laborers were not pleased with having to be laborers on white owned property [ men loading pack mules]
- 01:18
again. and it was especially bad because their masters wanted to bring back the
- 01:22
gang labor system, which was a lot worse than captain cool in the gang labor
- 01:26
system. but that was a different song so ask your parents. this is system working
- 01:30
hard all day with no breaks hashtag TBT slavery. the southern states made things [People working in a textile factory]
- 01:36
even worse for black laborers by making them signed year-long contract. well
- 01:40
remember the Black Codes from earlier these contracts were terrible and once [Guy wearing a mask]
- 01:44
again trap blacks in lives of servitude. it was a deal with the devil but it
- 01:48
would be only deal on the table for freed slaves. how come we never hear [Man begging in hell]
- 01:52
about deals with angels? oh that'd be nice for a change. the reconstruction
- 01:56
acts in 1867 in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment tried to help, but
- 02:00
they let the real culprit sharecropping slip right under their nose.
- 02:04
sharecropping was basically like renting land from the white owners but instead [Workers in a field]
- 02:08
of getting wages workers were just given a share
- 02:11
the crops they had helped to farm. plantation owners were like thanks for [Man holding cotton]
- 02:16
all the toil in the hot Sun now here's some crappy cotton. well we're just going
- 02:20
to come out and say it sharecropping sucked. the ironic thing was that it wasn't [man frowns in front of cotton field]
- 02:25
only bad for free blacks it was also bad for the economy of the entire
- 02:28
white-dominated South. the south economy was already shaky compared to the north's
- 02:33
and sharecropping only made the South even more dependent on King Cotton which [People taking from a king covered in cotton]
- 02:39
should have been renamed poor guy cotton because prices of cotton were falling
- 02:43
fast. also people renting the land former slave always ended up being in debt to
- 02:49
the person they were renting from. a few people were able to make it out and get [Landowner collecting money]
- 02:53
their own land but most were sucked back into debt, then mix in a heaping mound of
- 02:58
discrimination into this whirlpool of debt we've got a cycle of poverty that
- 03:02
far too many african-americans are still trying to escape today. if sharecropping [Debt going round in a washing machine]
- 03:06
didn't want people to know it was like slavery and should have bought a better
- 03:09
disguise. like seriously don't go to Kmart at least get one from one of the
- 03:14
good old costume stores yeah or even amazon. [man wears Darth Vader costume]
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