Sharecropping from 1800-1950 in the Mississippi Delta
Sharecropping from 1800-1950 in the Mississippi Delta[edit]
submitted by Jillian Hutchens
(picture taken from http://www.ruralhome.org/pubs/hsganalysis/ts2000/DeltaOverview.pdf)
The struggles of the economy of the Mississippi Delta during the nineteenth century and for the first half of the twentieth century tends to show the exploitation of African Americans in the region by white locals.
Prior to the Civil War, the majority of the Mississippi Delta, which makes up the counties that are shown on the map in not only Mississippi, but Louisiana, Arkansas, western Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and the southern tip of Ohio, was unattractive to white settlers. Due to these circumstances, which included a location that was far away from transportation and the land being incredibly swampy, many African Americans worked to clear the land in financial arrangements that allowed them to purchase land in these areas. This eventually resulted in many African Americans owning more land in the area than the white citizens. After the Civil War, this became problematic for the African Americans in this region because after the land had been cleared by African Americans, many whites moved into the area because it was what they considered to be inhabitable land. A depression in the cotton economy also put African Americans who had been using this as a means of making a profitable income at a loss, thus requiring them to give their land up for the time being, and when cotton prices began to climb again around the turn of the twentieth century, African Americans were unable to purchase land that they had already owned, creating a sharecropping economy, which has begun to leak into the twenty-first century. Many African Americans in the Mississippi Delta region have made a note of the fact that they feel that they do not belong. The song, Cross Roads Blues by Robert Johnson has been used by many teachers in many classrooms to demonstrate the feeling that many African Americans have had in their lives in this area.
The lyrics to Cross Roads Blues are as follows:
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above "Have mercy, now save poor Bob, if you please"
Yeoo, standin' at the crossroad, tried to flag a ride Ooo eeee, I tried to flag a ride
Didn't nobody seem to know me, babe, everybody pass me by
Standin' at the crossroad, baby, risin' sun goin' down
Standin' at the crossroad, baby, eee, eee, risin' sun goin' down
I believe to my soul, now, poor Bob is sinkin' down
You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown
You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown
That I got the crossroad blues this mornin', Lord, babe, I'm sinkin' down
And I went to the crossroad, mama, I looked east and west
I went to the crossroad, baby, I looked east and west
Lord, I didn't have no sweet woman, ooh well, babe, in my distress
Since the Civil Rights movement, sharecropping situations in the Mississippi Delta have changed very little. Many of the African American workers have continued to be exploited.
http://www.ruralhome.org/pubs/hsganalysis/ts2000/DeltaOverview.pdf