Reply #15: Actually, a huge number of sharecroppers where poor white people [View All]

[ET Awful]

and, a huge number of them became the migrant farmworkers of the dustbowl.

The family farms they lived on were, in fact, sharecropped, and belonged to the banks. When the dustbowl hit and huge draughts destroyed their crops, they were forced off the land and headed west, thus the vast dust bowl migrations.

It wasn't set up simply to control black farmers.

The only thing that kept people locked into sharecropping was that they had a piece of land that they could live on simply for a portion of their crops. The remainder of their crops served as both a means of income, and a means of sustenance (as they could sell part and keep part). They would never become wealthy, but they could live without too much difficulty, and, if they were willing to give up that plot of land on which many of them were born and raised, they could leave at any time. Most owned their own livestock, etc. They could produce all the food they needed from that plot of land. The biggest drawback being that they would never own the land, and that if they were hit by a draught, they could be evicted easily. This hasn't changed to any great extent today. Most family farms are owned by the bank in one way or another, the only difference is now the bank has to foreclose instead of just bulldozing the house.