Title	Mississippi River sharecroppers
Description	Appears to be a family of four African Americans preparing to work. Most likely, they are sharecroppers. The three youngest children, two boys and a girl, are barefoot. The youngest, a girl, is holding a long hoe that outsizes her. Shabby buildings and a rickety fence are visible in the background.
Historical note	Following the abolition of slavery, many white planters/farmers still needed a labor force to harvest crops and raise livestock. Out of slavery there developed a system of agriculture called sharecropping, and it grew quickly during Reconstruction. Tenants (mostly black, but many poor whites) were allowed to farm their own small plots of land in exchange for a portion of their harvest. Oftentimes the small value of the crop did not cover the price of the rent. That way the tenant family not only made no profit, it was in debt to the farmer. The family never got ahead. Every season, they compounded their debt. Sharecropping became a form of perpetual slavery.
Date	approximately 1900-1912
Collection name	Earl S. Miers River Photograph Collection
Subjects	Laborers African Americans Agricultural machinery & implements Agricultural laborers
Accession number	908
Owning Institution	Tennessee State Library and Archives
ID#	32993
Negative number	1909
Digital Type	Still Image
Digital Format	Image/jp2
Media Type	Photographs
Copyright	No copyright - United States: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
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