sharecropping

Cultural

A system of farming that developed in the South after the Civil War, when landowners, many of whom had formerly held slaves, lacked the cash to pay wages to farm laborers, many of whom were former slaves. The system called for dividing the crop into three shares — one for the landowner, one for the worker, and one for whoever provided seeds, fertilizer, and farm equipment.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

How he and Mama hadn’t been married very long, and were sharecropping in Missouri.

From Literature

They stayed to themselves, kept on sharecropping, and saving every dollar they could; hoping that someday they could buy a farm of their own.

From Literature

They were both so eager to get away from that sharecropping farm that they started loading the wagon by moonlight.

From Literature

“Good Trouble” begins by tracing his footsteps growing up in Troy, Ala., where he was born on February 21, 1940, the third of 10 children to a sharecropping family.

From Salon

Many of the victims were descendants of the enslaved who had been forced into sharecropping.

From Los Angeles Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023