After the Civil War, new technology began to transform American agriculture, while railroads and the growth of cities opened up new markets for cash crops. But farmers faced new economic pressures, and many recently freed Black (as well as some white farmers) were forced to become tenants or sharecroppers, facing endless cycles of debt. In this chapter, we’ll consider both improvements in agriculture and the difficulties farmers faced in the late nineteenth century.

Section Contents

• Life on the Land: The Piedmont Before Industrialization
• A Revolution in Agriculture
• Sharecropping and Tenant Farming
• Life on the Land: Voices
• A Sharecropper's Contract
• The Struggles of a Tenant Farmer
• The Evils of the Crop Lien System
• Tobacco Farming the Old Way
• The History of the State Fair
• The African American State Fair