Crop Liens, Freedmen, and Planters
Crop Liens, Freedmen, and Planters
DOI:10.14325/mississippi/9781617036675.003.0004
This chapter discusses the emergence of a new crop lien system and a new system of labor in the Cotton Kingdom: tenant farming and sharecropping. These forms of labor would dominate the Natchez District by the mid-1870s and became the primary means by which black croppers were able to access goods, credit, and even land. Tenancy and sharecropping also became the defining economic institution of the agricultural cotton-producing New South well into the twentieth century.
Keywords: Natchez District, crop lien system, tenant farming, sharecropping, black croppers