Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2023/Fall/Section20/Sam Harrison

Biography

At the time of his interview, Sam Harrison was an older sharecropper with six daughters, a wife named Tildy, and a resident of Whaleyville, Virginia. Harrison’s earlier life is unknown, but how he ended up in his current position is clear. In the recent past, Harrison had been on track to operate his own farm. However, due to an environmental factor out of his control, the crop he was supposed to sell failed, his buyer dropped him, and he was forced to find work on another man’s land–destroying his aspirations for economic independence. Concurrently, Tildy and one of his daughters had been consistently experiencing bouts of illness; when the interviewer was brought to Harrison, Tildy was seen coughing. Although the interviewer watched Harrison’s demeanor brighten at the mention of his occupation, the latter openly expressed his hopes that his daughters would choose another path. Additionally, Harrison conveys that he wishes he had a son to help him on the farm because he prefers his daughters not to partake in farm labor.

Social Context

Sharecropping

A black sharecropper plowing a field

Sharecropping arose after the end of slavery and the start of Reconstruction and continued through into the early and mid-twentieth century. Post-civil War, formerly enslaved people were intended to each gain forty acres and a mule. Due to neither the majority of  Radical Republicans nor Southerners supporting this policy, a system had to come about that would assure both landowners would have laborers and laboring freed African Americans would be paid for their work–hence, the creation of sharecropping. Additionally, sharecropping became a necessary compromise with the Southern economy in disarray during early Reconstruction due to a short supply of circulating currency, the uselessness of Confederate currency, and a degraded bank system. Although this was a profession commonly taken up by freed African Americans post-Civil War, white sharecroppers often outnumbered blacks. While this was not the most desirable work for formerly enslaved and unemployed blacks, it was often the only option. Sharecropping became such a powerful force in the rural South that during its height, “only about one-quarter of white people owned land.” Although the American Industrial Revolution provided new forms of agricultural technology, many smaller southern farms did not and could not take advantage of these advancements due to their higher price points. Because of this, “until the New Deal provided capital in the form of commodity subsidies and low-interest loans, southern farmers persisted in their labor-intensive, mule-driven methods of production.” Even when landlords were not as strict on their black and white sharecroppers, the intensive labor required before the Agricultural Adjustment Administration stepped in led to future generations turning away from the practice. For those born after the initial waves of sharecroppers, “migration from the rural South was a political act.”

Government Assistance

Before the Great Depression, governmental assistance and welfare were nonexistent. However, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt disseminated his New Deal programs throughout America to pull the country out of the worst economic downturn to date. A significant part of the New Deal and social welfare in general is the concept of social security. This concept eventually spread beyond New Deal programs into the Atlantic Charter, a document agreed upon by both the American and British government, and constitutions for emerging countries post World War II. Although this movement benefited most Americans, the reactionary “ideology of the dole” philosophy rose alongside it. This “ideology of the dole” separated the “deserving poor” and “undeserving poor” based on work ethic. In practice, this was instituted by administering assistance based upon whether the person or persons have participated or attempted to participate in some form of work even through their time of strife. Nevertheless, some Americans chose to be more “grateful to have a job as opposed to being on relief.” Nevertheless, even salaried workers could rely on state-offered assistance due to lay-offs due to low profit margins.

Monopolies in Agriculture

Although some farms were able to maintain the small, community-based, and serving production, “agriculture in the United States [transformed] from the family-oriented, self-sufficient farm to commercial agriculture serving distant consumers.” Due to the proliferation of railroad projects and operations, local farming products transformed from community staples to national commodities. Failing to adhere to production plans and quotas could end in losing one's land entirely. Measures such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, established in 1890, helped to dampen the power of oligarchical powers. However, due to the destabilizing effects of the Great Depression, the federal government began to take more direct control over agricultural happenings. In an attempt to stave off too much economic embarrassment, some farmers choose to overproduce in hopes of paying off debts; nevertheless, the widespread Depression across the company made it virtually impossible for a large part of Americans to purchase agricultural produce as they had in past decades. To help curb the issue of farming overproduction, the government paid individual farmers to cut “production enough to raise prices to parity levels,” as suggested by the USDA.

References

Altmeyer, Arthur . “Social Welfare in the United States.” Social Security. Accessed November 26, 2023. https://www.ssa.gov/history/aja964.html.

Fite, Gilbert C. “Southern Agriculture since the Civil War: An Overview.” Agricultural History 53, no. 1 (1979): 3–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3742855.

History.com Editors. 2010. Review of Sharecropping. HISTORY. A&E Television Networks. June 24, 2010. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sharecropping#rise-of-the-sharecropping-system.

Ian Ochiltree. “Mastering the Sharecroppers: Land, Labour and the Search for Independence in the US South and South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 41–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4133857.

Kirby, Jack Temple. “Black and White in the Rural South, 1915-1954.” Agricultural History 58, no. 3 (1984): 411–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3743088.

Lauck, Jon. “American Agriculture and the Problem of Monopoly.” Agricultural History 70, no. 2 (1996): 196–215. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3744533.

Arthur Rothstein, Sharecropper plowing. Montgomery County, Alabama, 1937, photograph.

Rose, Nancy E. “Work Relief in the 1930s and the Origins of the Social Security Act.” Social Service Review 63, no. 1 (1989): 63–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30012001.

“Sam Harrison”, Folder 992, Federal Writers’ Project papers #03709, Southern Historical Collection, the Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.