Name _________________________________
Period ________
Standards Focus: Historical Context
African-American Life in the South During the 1930s
Sharecropping
After the Civil War, which eventually made slavery illegal in the United States,
landowners lost their slave workforce. Landowners had the land, but couldn’t afford
to hire workers to plant, care for, and harvest crops; as a result, the sharecropping
system was adopted.
In this system, laborers worked land that belonged to someone else. Workers would
plant and harvest the land. In return, the landowner would provide them with a
home and the tools, animals, seeds, and other resources the sharecropper needed to
work the land. The landowner extended credit to the sharecropper for the basic
necessities of life. At harvest time, the sharecropper would usually receive half of the
value of the crop – minus whatever was owed to the landowner.
You can probably already see what kinds of abuses this type of system would have.
The sharecroppers were dependent on the landowner and at the mercy of the
weather. If there was drought, insect infestation, or flood that caused a lost or
diminished crop, the sharecropper could fall further into debt to the landowner. If
the landowner was dishonest, the sharecropper wouldn’t make a profit. The
landowner might even own a plantation store and require sharecroppers to shop in
his store. Landowners could keep the sharecroppers in debt, and thereby control
them. Sharecroppers had little hope of getting out of debt or earning enough money
to buy their
own farms andSolutions
finally have true
independence as landowners
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themselves.
Sharecroppers were both black and white although the majority of sharecroppers
were African-Americans. Regardless of their race, sharecroppers had a difficult life.
The entire family had to help work the land. Children might not be able to regularly
attend school if a school was even available in the rural area. If an African-American
spoke up against the system, the “night riders” might visit them. Night riders were
whites who intimidated and sometimes murdered African-Americans.
Fact: Sharecropping is
not a new concept.
The ancient cultures of
Mesopotamia, Egypt
and Rome practiced a
system of
sharecropping.
Sharecropping is still
practiced in some parts
of the world today.
©2010 Secondary Solutions
During this time, many African-Americans left the
South. They moved in an effort to find a better life in
another part of the United States and to escape the deep
racial discrimination that was prevalent in the South.
From 1910 – 1930, over one million African-Americans
moved from the South.
Sharecropping eventually died out. In response to the
Great Depression, the Agricultural Advancement Act
was passed in 1933. The AAA was designed to reduce
the surplus of crops by paying landowners a subsidy for
not planting crops. While this may have helped the
landowners, it put many sharecroppers out of work
because the landowners no longer needed the crops.
Additionally, farming became more mechanized and
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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Literature Guide
Name _________________________________
Period ________
machines began to take the job of human laborers – making sharecroppers in
America a thing of the past.
Civil Rights/ Jim Crow Laws
Imagine not being allowed to go into a restaurant or drink from a water fountain
because of the color of your skin. In the South, segregation was the norm. Jim Crow
laws were designed to separate blacks and whites – separate schools, public
buildings, public transportation, restaurants, even water fountains.
The laws were justified by an 1896 Supreme Court ruling called Plessy vs. Ferguson.
The ruling stated that it was constitutional for public facilities for whites and black to
be “separate but equal.” However, it was widely accepted that the facilities for blacks
were inferior to those for whites.
Not only were blacks barred from “white only” places, blacks were expected to defer
to whites regardless of any differences in education or financial status. The manner
and tone in which some whites spoke to blacks also conveyed discrimination. Blacks
were referred to in offensive terms. You’ll read some of those terms in Roll of
Thunder, Hear My Cry. You’ll also read about how the segregation of schools was
clearly not “equal.” The black school is given the cast-off books from a white school,
and the black students don’t have a school bus, but the white students do.
You will probably feel the same indignation and anger over these events that the
characters in the book feel. And, as you read in the biography of Mildred Taylor, that
is part of her purpose for writing the novel: to bring “understanding” to the reader.
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Comprehension Check: Exploring Expository Writing
Part A
Directions: Use a dictionary to find the part of speech and definition of each of
the following words from the article. Write your answers on a separate piece of
paper.
drought, infestation, diminished, intimidated, discrimination, prevalent, surplus,
subsidy, barred, defer, indignation
Part B
Directions: Use the information you read about African-American Life in the
South during 1930s to answer the following questions on your own paper using
complete sentences.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
List three problems African-Americans encountered in the South in the 1930s.
How did sharecropping work?
Why did African-Americans move from the South during this time period?
Why might the landowners want to keep the sharecroppers indebted to them?
Why do you think laborers decided to become sharecroppers?
What did segregation in the South mean?
Explain the term “separate but equal.”
How did the Supreme Court’s ruling on “Plessy vs. Ferguson” contribute to the
discrimination against blacks?
©2010 Secondary Solutions
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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Literature Guide