The Weeping Land and Its People

By Tanya Souther

The end of the Civil War brought freedom and a displaced workforce to the South. The plantation owners in the South had to devise a plan to provide employment and shelter to many people with nowhere to go. The landowners divided their land into small plots ranging from thirty to fifty acres, sometimes more, which they contracted out to sharecroppers and tenant farmers. In contrast to tenant farmers, sharecroppers usually do not provide their capital or inputs (such as seeds, tools, and fertilizer). The landowner often provides these, and the cost is then deducted from the sharecropper's harvest portion. The renting out land system provided immediate employment, often leaving sharecroppers in debt and dependent on landowners. Tenant farmers, on the other hand, often invest their money in farming. Tenant farmers are responsible for their agricultural inputs and typically have more control over their farming methods and crop choices. The significant difference empowers tenant farmers despite the risk of crop failure and financial loss. Both sharecropping and tenant farming are different farming careers, but theoretically these paths are often included in statistics and censuses as the same career. Both systems had significant economic implications for the Southern economy, shaping its post-Civil War landscape. Much was in a part of the southern United States known as the Black Belt of the South. The region ran from the Carolinas to the very eastern edge of Texas and was known as the black belt due to the fertile black soil and the men who worked the land and contributed to the economy of the South. 

Additionally, the agricultural economy of the southern United States during the early 1900s mainly depended upon the efforts of the community of sharecroppers and tenant farmers. These individuals persevered through numerous challenges and obstacles as they worked on land owned by landlords or plantation owners, earning a portion of their harvest as rent. The sharecropper usually gave the landowner one-fourth to half of the crops, leaving the rest to the sharecroppers. Many lived in tiny, confined homes with newspapers to insulate them from the cold. These homes lacked necessities such as running water and electricity; therefore, the lack of appropriate sanitation facilities puts these individuals at risk of contracting diseases. During the Great Depression, the sharecropping communities of the Black Belt of the Southern United States faced even worse hardships due to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of the New Deal. The Act encouraged landowners to destroy crops, resulting in less land for the croppers to work. The act led to a significant decrease in their income, making it difficult for them to afford necessities such as food and clothing. The Act also increased unemployment, as many sharecroppers needed land to work. These devastating impacts on their communities are a stark reminder of the harsh realities of the Great Depression. Amidst the Great Depression, the sharecropping communities of the Black Belt in the Southern United States were thrust into even deeper hardships, primarily due to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of the New Deal. The AAA Act incentivized landowners to destroy crops, drastically reducing the land available for the croppers, thereby devastating their communities.

In addition, as a part of the AAA of the New Deal, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace had instructed landowners to cull millions of juvenile pigs due to overpopulation. He ordered millions of acres of immature maize, cotton, and wheat to be plowed under to prevent overproduction of these resources. These stipulations were to regulate the prices of the listed goods, and if the landowner did so, they would be entitled to payments under the Act. Landowners had to retire a quarter of their land to make the future and ongoing payments, making them known as three-fourths farmers. However, the sharecroppers and tenant farmers criticized the Act, saying that the subsidy payments benefited large plantations and landowners more than the croppers. The croppers felt this way because the landowner was the only one eligible for the relief funds, making them responsible for the payment distribution to their croppers and tenants. We can see this in the book by David Conrad, "The Forgotten Farmers: The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal." he explains a study by Ezekiel, who was an agent in the AAA: "The agent found that 65 percent of the landlords had recognized their "three-fourths" tenants as managing share-tenants; however, he admitted many of them held the view that no tenants were entitled to share rental benefits." ^[1]

Furthermore, with the decline in cotton production during that time, many landowners had no choice but to let go of tenant farmers and sharecroppers, which compounded the poverty in rural southern areas. The landowners were not allowed to use their one-fourth of land for contract farming under these provisions, but only for private farming if desired. As we can see by the words of Arthur Raper, "many of the benefits meant for the landless farmers have been appropriated by the planters and merchants, upon whom the landless farmers have been continuously dependent, to whom they have been continuously in debt.,"^[2] With the landowners keeping the subsidy payments, the cycle of debt and poverty continues.

However, despite these objections, the AAA made a crucial attempt to tackle the economic difficulties faced by farmers. According to data, roughly 900,000 farm households earned less than $400 per year, which included the cost of crops and items raised and ingested by the family. Furthermore, around 500,000 farms encompassed an area of 100,000,000 acres, and more than 40% of American households were tenants and sharecroppers rather than farm owners. as mentioned in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D Roosevelt. “Most of these farms were either marginal or unfit for crop cultivation under the usage conditions making it impossible to provide sufficient subsistence.” ^[3] The problem was further aggravated by excessive debt, which impoverished many farmers.  Which we can see by this quote from The Public Paper and Addresses of Franklin D Roosevelt “The Overburdening debt was keeping many farmers in poverty and preventing them from a fresh start.”^[4] These issues need to be addressed to uplift the rural South. Parts of the southern United States are still in poverty many decades after implementing the sharecropping and tenant farming system.

Understandably, historians have analyzed the history of sharecropping and found that the AAA of New Deal and related programs had led to a controversial subject. Several sources have shed light on the challenges faced by sharecroppers during the New Deal era and how it is still a topic of debate today. In Donald Grubb's book, A Cry from the Cotton, Grubb argues that the New Deal's agricultural policies were designed to benefit landowners at the expense of tenants and sharecroppers. He asserts that these policies led to significant hardship for sharecroppers, who faced issues such as socialism, poverty, violence, and political procrastination. The AAA's approach often resulted in reduced crop production and payments that favored landowners, who were not required to share the benefits with their tenants. Dale Maharidge's book follows up on James Agee and Walker Evans's iconic work, tracking down the descendants of the original families featured. He documents how most of these families moved to urban areas for work and felt stigmatized by the portrayal of their ancestors as destitute and ignorant. The current generations attributed their struggles to historical disadvantages, including a lack of education, poor health, and low socioeconomic status, which were exacerbated by the conditions under which their forebears lived and worked. In David Eugene Conrad's book, The Forgotten Farmers: Story of Sharecroppers, Conrad delves into the specifics of the AAA and how its implementation created problems for tenants and sharecroppers. By focusing on the cotton programs, he illustrates how these policies often led to displacement and economic difficulties for sharecroppers, as landowners were incentivized to reduce production and thus had less need for tenant labor. In the book Tenants of the Almighty, Arthur Raper provides a historical analysis of sharecropping from the end of the Civil War through the 1930s. He uses the case study of a single county in Georgia, part of the southern Black Belt, to investigate the effects of the AAA. Raper employs photographs from the Farm Security Administration to visually documents the negative impacts of the Act on local populations. However, his work is limited in scope as it does not extend this analysis to other regions within the Southern Black Belt, leaving a gap in the broader understanding of the policy's effects. These works collectively underscore that while the New Deal aimed to alleviate economic distress during the Great Depression, its agricultural policies often had unintended adverse effects on sharecroppers. The emphasis on benefiting landowners at the expense of tenants and sharecroppers led to increased poverty and displacement among the latter group. The negative legacy of these policies continues to be a topic of debate among historians, reflecting the complexities and regional variances in the experiences of those living in the Southern Black Belt during this era.

As a result of the New Deal era, many sharecroppers faced numerous challenges in planting crops due to the control of agricultural commodities. The Act deemed it a high priority to regulate specific gains crops such as wheat, field corn, and rice. The demand was still actually high for cotton, tobacco, milk, and by-products from these crops. Out of all these commodities, cotton is the one that the world relies on for the most by-products. We have seen the landlords' enforcement of a one-crop system, which was a hardship for these croppers, who had cotton as the sole crop. The lien system caused an economic obstacle to the farmers of the South. This system heavily relied on cotton for various commodities, such as clothing, furniture, and household items. Even with the heavy reliance on the cotton crops, the southern economy suffered greatly. Because of the worsening conditions, the AAA Administration passed another provision tied to the New Deal Act in 1933. One provision in the New Deal Act was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, known as (FERA). This FERA administration was responsible for the public emergency that the nation was under due to the Depression, and not just sharecroppers and tenants. The goal of the FERA was to help with the unemployment problem and to help the Country get out of the Depression. It was also to help rural areas so that we as a nation would hopefully never see a Depression as bad as this again. Sadly, things took a turn for the worse in 1934 when a severe drought hit the farming community of the southern black belt, further compounding the challenges faced by the croppers. The drought and AAA had disastrous effects throughout the Country, but they were tremendously worse for these farmers who already had a difficult life. Unfortunately, the Administration at the time attempted to absolve itself of blame for the hunger that had engulfed the nation. As we can see in the newspaper article by The Producers of News, "The AAA and the drought have worked too well in double harness. By this late action, the Administration is seeking to avoid responsibility for its part in the famine which now threatens the Country. The Administration already hears the shouts of the city workers demanding food that their meager purses cannot buy.”^[5] The Administration already sees the impoverished farmers on the March for real relief. This, in a real sense, is the primary reason for the AAA's retreat. With many New Deal Acts still in place to aid people, the sharecroppers' community changed little over the years.

Additionally, in 1935, yet another provision of the New Deal was The Resettlement Act, which entailed the government purchasing failing plantation estates. Then, the government would build low-income communities. The resettlement act would allow sharecroppers and tenant farmers to escape contract farming and not keep them dependent upon the landowners. These communities were built primarily in the southern part of the United States. As mentioned by Donald Holley, a respected historian and accomplished author who was also a dedicated professor, "The homesteader entered into a lease-and-purchase contract with the government, agreeing to pay for his farm over a forty-year period at three percent interest with annual payments of about $185."^[6] At the end of forty years, the farmers would own the land they had worked for their whole lives.

However, in 1937, a devastating event unfolded- a massive flood that engulfed a significant portion of the southern United States and the Great Plains. This natural disaster, a stark reminder of the unpredictability of life, posed a new challenge to the Administration of the AAA. In response to the new challenges, the Administration of the New Deal passed The Bankhead-Jones Tenant Farm Act, which provided sharecroppers and tenant loans to purchase land at a discounted rate of 4% or less. Those who took advantage of this program eventually saw a brighter future, as illustrated in the book "And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by Dale Maharidge. Back about 1940, Fred purchased under a hundred and fifty acres under the New Deal loan program designed to turn sharecroppers and tenants into landlords. After signing the lease, a thunderstorm blew through and knocked down many trees on Fred's land. He saw an opportunity and sold the fallen trees, which presented him the required funds to pay off his loan early and even left him with a profit to spare. After this, a debate could be made about whether it was the Act or the storm that brightened Fred and his family's future.

Even though many farmers had taken advantage of the 1935 and 1937 acts, many still practiced sharecropping and tenant farming as a way of life. These farming families trying to get ahead and fighting for better wages brought about the strike of 1939, a sharecroppers' strike in Mississippi County, Missouri. Tenant farmers and sharecroppers staged a protest. They placed tents along the highway to raise attention to the horrible economic and housing circumstances that kept them poor and dependent on this cycle of farming life. Over two grueling months, a community of fifteen hundred Missourians established a makeshift settlement along Highway 60, spanning from Sikeston to Charleston. This temporary home was a stark testament to the harsh realities of the sharecroppers' lives during the strike. They endured severe weather conditions, inadequate shelter, and limited access to basic amenities, vividly depicting their hardships. Some would even say things grew worse with the strike of 1939 by sharecroppers and tenants, which resulted from a loophole that landowners exploited to deprive sharecroppers of their rightful share of payments. They did this by evicting the sharecroppers and rehiring them as day laborers, who were not covered under the Act. Day laborers earned minuscule daily wages, barely enough for these people to survive. The croppers and tenant farmers saw mass evictions, causing more hardships to an already horrendous life. As recorded by Mr. Whitfield in a newspaper article by the Evening Star out of Washington D.C.  Whitfield, leader of sharecroppers' protests against mass evictions in Sikeston, Mo, describes how the newspapermen and government officials spoke out about the 150-mile front that was established by homeless families on the United state highway 61. The protest stemmed from the mass eviction notices. He outlined and pointed out the sharecroppers' many hardships and problems during this time. "Saying that conditions have been getting worse for five years and that the problem was not limited to his region of Missouri but was general throughout the South."^[7] The strike of 1939 brought nationwide attention to the plight of the sharecroppers and tenant farmers. The demonstrations that drew the nation's attention also got people talking about how the New Deal affected the sharecroppers. As we can see in the quote by Louis Cantor, "although the demonstration caused a stir in the upper echelons of the federal government, it apparently failed to bring about any fundamental change in the attitude of the new deal toward the sharecropper and the tenant."^[8] The demonstrations continued for an extended period, and over 100 families stood their ground and refused to leave the highway. "In a statement from Harry Parker, the State Health Commissioner had told Colonel B.M. Casteel of the Highway Patrol to eliminate camps as soon as possible before an epidemic caused a state-wide and national health menace."^[9] If he was unsuccessful in finding adequate placement for them, he was instructed that they would go to concentration camp-type encampments.

Mainly because the locals in the county were eager to get them out of the public eye, and they had to relocate to an area known as Birds Point- New Madrid Spillway, the croppers dubbed the "homeless junction." Unfortunately, this area was quite swampy and had been covered by floodwaters from the 1937 flood. This condition again left demonstrators without access to drinkable water or sanitation facilities. Mr. Whitfield, the leader of the Farmers Union, tried to help the croppers continuously throughout this period. We can see in a journal article, "A Prologue to the Protest Movement," covers the 1939 Missouri Sharecropper Roadside Demonstration by Louis Cantor, a quote by Mr. Whitfield, "take your eyes out of the sky because someone is stealing your bread." ^[10]Soon after this quote, he raised enough money to buy ninety acres of land and set up Coopersville. He helped many families that the government policies had left stricken in poverty. 

Unfortunately, the sharecropping community in the southern United States faced severe and unforeseen negative repercussions from the Agricultural Adjustment and natural disasters that plagued the region in the thirties. One of the most devastating results was the evictions in 1939, which left many families without food and shelter. These families had been sharecroppers for generations and were suddenly uprooted from their homes and livelihoods. Most of the farming community completed only the third grade of school, further compounding their difficulties. While there were success stories from the New Deal and its provisions, many sharecroppers could not benefit from the Bankhead-Jones or Resettlement Acts, designed to provide financial and educational assistance to the farmers. Sharecroppers could attribute this to the fact that more education was needed. Many sharecroppers should have taken advantage of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration of The New Deal, as farming was the only career they had known.

^[1] David Eugene Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers; the Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal (Urbana: University of Illinois Press., 1965,) https://archive.org/details/forgottenfarmers0000unse/mode/2up.

^[2] Arthur Franklin Raper, 1936. Preface to Peasantry; a Tale of Two Black Belt Counties. Internet Archive. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1936,) https://archive.org/details/prefacetopeasant0000rape_y1x9/page/6/mode/2up?q=Benefits+meant.

^[3] Franklin D. Roosevelt and Samuel Irving Rosenman, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt. [Electronic Resource]: With a Special Introduction and Explanatory Notes by President Roosevelt. (New York: Random House, 1938,) https://archive.org/details/4925387.1935.001.umich.edu/page/130/mode/2up.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] National Endowment for the Humanities, “The Producers News. [Volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, August 23, 1934, Image 2.” Chroniclingamerica.loc.gov, August 23, 1934. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85053305/1934-08-23/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1770&index=0&rows=20&words=AAA+crops+planting&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=planting+crops+with+AAA&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

^[6] Donald Holley, “Old and New Worlds in the New Deal Resettlement Program: Two Louisiana Projects,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 11, no. 2 (1970): 137–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4231118.

^[7] National Endowment for the Humanities, “Evening Star. [Volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, February 09, 1939, Image 16.” Chroniclingamerica.loc.gov, February 9, 1939. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1939-02-09/ed-1/seq-16/#date1=1939&index=0&date2=12%2F31%2F1963&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&words=Sharecroppers+sharecroppers+Whitfield&proxdistance=5&state=&rows=20&ortext=Whitfield+&proxtext.

^[8] Louis Cantor, “A Prologue to the Protest Movement: The Missouri Sharecropper Roadside Demonstration of 1939,” The Journal of American History 55, no. 4 (1969): 804. https://doi.org/10.2307/1900154.

^[9] “‘Out Yonder on the Road’: Working Class Self-Representation and the 1939 Roadside Demonstration in Southeast Missouri.” n.d. https://southernspaces.org/2010/out-yonder-road-working-class-self-representation-and-1939-roadside-demonstration-southeast-missouri/.

^[10] Cantor, “A Prologue to the Protest Movement,” 804.