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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."

Language:
English Language

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

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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