Student Question
How did sharecropping contribute to the failure of Reconstruction?
Quick answer:
Sharecropping contributed to the failure of Reconstruction by keeping freed slaves in poverty and dependency, undermining the goal of providing them with a new and better life. The system forced them to remain economically subordinate to landowners, similar to conditions during slavery, thus failing to offer genuine freedom or improvement in their social and economic status.
One of the purposes of Reconstruction (at least in the minds of some people) was to give the freed slaves a chance at a new and better life. The fact that sharecropping became so prevalent shows that Reconstruction failed to achieve that goal. Sharecropping kept blacks in poverty and in a position in which they pretty much had to do what they were told by the owner of the land they were working. This was not very good for the freed slaves in that it did not give them a chance to truly escape the way things had been during slavery.
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