WEBVTT

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- The law of sharecropping
emerges over time.

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Okay, so you don't have
sharecropping in 1865 or 1866.

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It takes time for
that system to emerge.

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What you have is a
lot of uncertainty,

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people being promised
wages and not being paid

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or people saying, "We'll
work, we'll try and keep on

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"as we did," and some kind
of informal arrangement.

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It takes time for the law
of sharecropping to emerge.

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And it emerges because
landowners don't
have money to pay

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and the free people have
no land of their own.

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They don't have the basis
for that independence

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because promises made during
the Civil War about land

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or cheap land being
available to the freed people

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were not kept.

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The Freedmen's Bureau
is the Freedmen's Bureau

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of Refugees and Abandoned Lands.

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Many had hoped that some
of those abandoned lands,

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these were lands that had been
confiscated during the war,

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would be sold very
cheaply or perhaps given,

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the whole idea of
40 acres and a mule,

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to the freed people.

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When that didn't
emerge, people realized

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they had little choice but to
work for former slave owners.

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Their options were
often quite few

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because if you
didn't have a skill,

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growing cotton was the one
thing you learned how to do.

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After this initial
period of movement,

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searching for something
different, wanting
to see the city,

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wanting to see
something different,

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people would perhaps
return to the communities

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that they knew best and try
and strike a good bargain

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or agreement with
former landowners.

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So landowners who
don't have money,

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freed people who
need to survive,

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come up really with this
bargain called sharecropping.

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A sharecropper will agree
to work for a percentage

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of the proceeds of the cotton,

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of the sale of the cotton crop.

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And so you're not paid.
You're not a wage worker.

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You're not paid wages and
you don't own the land.

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But you're allowed to live
there and work the crop

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and then you get a proceed
once that crop is sold.