Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Cross References
- Entries
- Abbott, Robert S.
- Abele, Julian F.
- Affirmative Action
- Africa
- African Blood Brotherhood (ABB)
- Afro-American Studies
- Agriculture
- AIDS
- Ali, Muhammad
- Allen, Richard
- American Revolution
- Anderson, Marian
- Angelou, Maya
- Anticommunism
- Antilynching Campaign
- Antislavery Movement
- Antiterror Wars
- Apartheid
- Architecture
- Art
- Ashe, Arthur R.
- Associated Negro Press (ANP)
- Atlanta Compromise (1895)
- Back-to-Africa Movement
- Baker, Ella J.
- Baker v. Carr (1962)
- Bakke v. Board of Regents of California (1978)
- Baldwin, James
- Barnett, Claude A.
- Bates, Daisy L.
- Bethune, Mary McLeod
- Birth of a Nation, The (1915)
- Black Arts Movement
- Black Belt
- Black Bourgeoisie (1957)
- Black Manifesto (1969)
- Black Nationalism
- Black Panther Party (BPP)
- Black Power Movement
- Black Towns
- Bloody Sunday
- Bond, Horace M.
- Bond, Julian
- Bouchet, Edward A.
- Brooke, Edward W.
- Brooks, Gwendolyn E.
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP)
- Brown, Charlotte Hawkins
- Brown, James N. (Jim)
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
- Buchanan v. Warley (1917)
- Buffalo Soldiers
- Bunche, Ralph J.
- Business
- Caesar, Shirley
- Capitalism
- Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Turé)
- Carver, George Washington
- Chesnutt, Charles W.
- Children's Defense Fund (CDF)
- Chisholm, Shirley A.
- Cities
- Civil Rights Act of 1957
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Civil Rights Act of 1968
- Civil Rights Movement (CRM)
- Civil War
- Clark, Kenneth B.
- Clark, Septima P.
- Clubs
- Cold War
- Colonialism
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Constitution, US (1789)
- Conventions, National Negro
- Convict-Lease System
- Cooper, Anna Julia
- Cosby, William H. (Bill)
- Dance
- Davis, Angela Y.
- Davis, W. Allison
- Death Penalty
- Delany, Martin R.
- DePriest, Oscar S.
- Desegregation
- Divine, Father (George Baker)
- Douglass, Frederick
- Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
- Drew, Charles R.
- Du Bois, W. E. B.
- Durham Manifesto (1942)
- Education
- Ellison, Ralph
- Emancipation
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- Evers, Medgar W.
- Executive Order 9981 (1948)
- Exodusters
- Family
- Farmer, James L.
- Farrakhan, Louis A.
- Feminism
- Film
- Fisher, Miles Mark
- Foreign Affairs
- “Forty Acres and a Mule”
- Four Freedoms
- Franklin, Aretha L.
- Franklin, John Hope
- Fraternal Orders and Lodges
- Fraternities
- Free African Society (FAS)
- Free Blacks
- Freedmen's Bank
- Freedmen's Bureau
- Freedom Rides
- Freedom Summer
- Freedom Train
- Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
- Garvey, Marcus M.
- Ghetto
- G. I. Bill (1944)
- Gibson, Althea
- Gospel of Freedom
- Graves, Earl G.
- Great Depression
- Great Migration
- Haitian Revolution
- Hall, Prince
- Hamer, Fannie Lou
- Hampton–Tuskegee Idea
- Hancock, Gordon B.
- Handy, William C. (W. C.)
- Harlem Renaissance
- Harris, Abram L.
- Hastie, William H.
- Height, Dorothy I.
- Higginbotham, H. Leon
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
- Hope, John
- Horne, Lena M.
- Houston, Charles H.
- Hughes, Langston
- Humphrey–Hawkins Bill (1976)
- Immigration
- Indentured Servitude
- Indian Wars
- Institute of the Black World (IBW)
- Interracial Relations
- Jackson, Jesse L.
- Jackson, Luther P.
- Jackson, Mahalia
- Jackson, Michael J.
- Jacobs, Harriet A.
- Jemison, Mae C.
- Jobs Campaigns
- John Brown's Raid
- John Henryism
- Johnson, John A. (Jack)
- Johnson, John H.
- Johnson, Sargent C.
- Jordan, Barbara C.
- Jordan, Michael J.
- Journalism
- Journey of Reconciliation (1947)
- Just, Ernest E.
- Justice, US Department of
- Katzenbach v. McClung (1964)
- Kerner Report
- King, Martin Luther, Jr.
- Korean War
- Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
- Kwanzaa
- Labor
- Law Enforcement
- Lawson, James M.
- Lee, Shelton J. (Spike)
- Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
- Lewis, Edmonia
- Lewis, John R.
- Lewis, Reginald F.
- “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
- Literature
- Little (X), Malcolm
- Little Rock Crisis
- Louis, Joe
- Loving v. Virginia (1967)
- Mandela, Nelson R.
- Manumission
- March on Washington (1963)
- March on Washington Movement (MOWM)
- Marshall, Thurgood
- Massive Resistance
- Mays, Benjamin E.
- McCoy, Elijah J.
- McKissick, Floyd B.
- McKissick v. Carmichael (1951)
- Medicine
- Micheaux, Oscar
- Military
- Milliken v. Bradley (1974)
- Minorities, Racial and Ethnic
- Miscegenation
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
- Mitchell, Clarence M.
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Moore, Harry T.
- Morgan v. Virginia (1946)
- Morrison, Toni
- Moseley-Braun, Carol
- Motley, Constance Baker
- Moynihan Report
- Muhammad, Elijah
- Multiculturalism
- Murray, Pauli
- Music
- Nation of Islam (NOI)
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
- National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW)
- National Association of Colored Women (NACW)
- National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
- National Urban League (NUL)
- Négritude
- Negro History Movement
- New Left
- New Negro Movement
- Niagara Movement
- Norris v. Alabama (1935)
- Obama, Barack H.
- Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity)
- Owens, James C. (Jesse)
- Pan-African Movement
- Parks, Gordon
- Parks, Rosa L.
- Persian Gulf War
- Philanthropy
- Photography
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
- Politics
- Port Chicago Mutiny (1944)
- Poverty
- Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.
- Powell, Colin L.
- Race Labels
- Race Man/Woman
- Randolph, A. Philip
- Reconstruction (1865–77)
- Redistricting
- Religion
- Resegregation
- Rice, Condoleeza
- Robeson, Paul
- Robinson, Jack R. (Jackie)
- Roots
- Rosenwald Schools
- Rustin, Bayard T.
- Scholarship
- Science
- Segregation
- Share Croppers’ Union (SCU)
- Sharecropping
- Shaw v. Reno (1993)
- Sit-ins
- Slavery
- Smith v. Allwright (1944)
- Societies, Mutual Aid
- Sororities
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC)
- Spanish-American War
- Spaulding, Charles C.
- Sports
- State Convention of Colored Men of Texas (1883)
- Student Activism
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971)
- Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
- Talented Tenth
- Technology
- Television
- Temperance Movement
- Terrell, Mary Church
- Theatre
- Thomas, Clarence
- Thurman, Howard
- TransAfrica
- Truth, Sojourner
- Tubman, Harriet R.
- Tuskegee Experiment
- Tuskegee Machine
- Underground Railroad
- United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
- Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
- Vietnam War
- Violence, Racial
- Voter Education Project (VEP)
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Wagner Act (1935)
- Walker, Alice
- Walker, David
- Walker, Madam C. J.
- Walker, Maggie Lena
- Washington, Booker T.
- Weaver, Robert C.
- Welfare
- Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
- Wheatley, Phillis
- White, Walter F.
- Wilder, L. Douglas
- Wilkins, Roy O.
- Williams, Robert F.
- Wilmington Ten
- Winfrey, Oprah G.
- Woods, Eldrick T. (Tiger)
- Woodson, Carter G.
- World War I
- World War II
- Wright, Richard
- Young, Andrew J.
- Young, Plummer B.
- Young, Whitney M.
- Index
- References
Agriculture
from Entries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Cross References
- Entries
- Abbott, Robert S.
- Abele, Julian F.
- Affirmative Action
- Africa
- African Blood Brotherhood (ABB)
- Afro-American Studies
- Agriculture
- AIDS
- Ali, Muhammad
- Allen, Richard
- American Revolution
- Anderson, Marian
- Angelou, Maya
- Anticommunism
- Antilynching Campaign
- Antislavery Movement
- Antiterror Wars
- Apartheid
- Architecture
- Art
- Ashe, Arthur R.
- Associated Negro Press (ANP)
- Atlanta Compromise (1895)
- Back-to-Africa Movement
- Baker, Ella J.
- Baker v. Carr (1962)
- Bakke v. Board of Regents of California (1978)
- Baldwin, James
- Barnett, Claude A.
- Bates, Daisy L.
- Bethune, Mary McLeod
- Birth of a Nation, The (1915)
- Black Arts Movement
- Black Belt
- Black Bourgeoisie (1957)
- Black Manifesto (1969)
- Black Nationalism
- Black Panther Party (BPP)
- Black Power Movement
- Black Towns
- Bloody Sunday
- Bond, Horace M.
- Bond, Julian
- Bouchet, Edward A.
- Brooke, Edward W.
- Brooks, Gwendolyn E.
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP)
- Brown, Charlotte Hawkins
- Brown, James N. (Jim)
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
- Buchanan v. Warley (1917)
- Buffalo Soldiers
- Bunche, Ralph J.
- Business
- Caesar, Shirley
- Capitalism
- Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Turé)
- Carver, George Washington
- Chesnutt, Charles W.
- Children's Defense Fund (CDF)
- Chisholm, Shirley A.
- Cities
- Civil Rights Act of 1957
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Civil Rights Act of 1968
- Civil Rights Movement (CRM)
- Civil War
- Clark, Kenneth B.
- Clark, Septima P.
- Clubs
- Cold War
- Colonialism
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Constitution, US (1789)
- Conventions, National Negro
- Convict-Lease System
- Cooper, Anna Julia
- Cosby, William H. (Bill)
- Dance
- Davis, Angela Y.
- Davis, W. Allison
- Death Penalty
- Delany, Martin R.
- DePriest, Oscar S.
- Desegregation
- Divine, Father (George Baker)
- Douglass, Frederick
- Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
- Drew, Charles R.
- Du Bois, W. E. B.
- Durham Manifesto (1942)
- Education
- Ellison, Ralph
- Emancipation
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- Evers, Medgar W.
- Executive Order 9981 (1948)
- Exodusters
- Family
- Farmer, James L.
- Farrakhan, Louis A.
- Feminism
- Film
- Fisher, Miles Mark
- Foreign Affairs
- “Forty Acres and a Mule”
- Four Freedoms
- Franklin, Aretha L.
- Franklin, John Hope
- Fraternal Orders and Lodges
- Fraternities
- Free African Society (FAS)
- Free Blacks
- Freedmen's Bank
- Freedmen's Bureau
- Freedom Rides
- Freedom Summer
- Freedom Train
- Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
- Garvey, Marcus M.
- Ghetto
- G. I. Bill (1944)
- Gibson, Althea
- Gospel of Freedom
- Graves, Earl G.
- Great Depression
- Great Migration
- Haitian Revolution
- Hall, Prince
- Hamer, Fannie Lou
- Hampton–Tuskegee Idea
- Hancock, Gordon B.
- Handy, William C. (W. C.)
- Harlem Renaissance
- Harris, Abram L.
- Hastie, William H.
- Height, Dorothy I.
- Higginbotham, H. Leon
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
- Hope, John
- Horne, Lena M.
- Houston, Charles H.
- Hughes, Langston
- Humphrey–Hawkins Bill (1976)
- Immigration
- Indentured Servitude
- Indian Wars
- Institute of the Black World (IBW)
- Interracial Relations
- Jackson, Jesse L.
- Jackson, Luther P.
- Jackson, Mahalia
- Jackson, Michael J.
- Jacobs, Harriet A.
- Jemison, Mae C.
- Jobs Campaigns
- John Brown's Raid
- John Henryism
- Johnson, John A. (Jack)
- Johnson, John H.
- Johnson, Sargent C.
- Jordan, Barbara C.
- Jordan, Michael J.
- Journalism
- Journey of Reconciliation (1947)
- Just, Ernest E.
- Justice, US Department of
- Katzenbach v. McClung (1964)
- Kerner Report
- King, Martin Luther, Jr.
- Korean War
- Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
- Kwanzaa
- Labor
- Law Enforcement
- Lawson, James M.
- Lee, Shelton J. (Spike)
- Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
- Lewis, Edmonia
- Lewis, John R.
- Lewis, Reginald F.
- “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
- Literature
- Little (X), Malcolm
- Little Rock Crisis
- Louis, Joe
- Loving v. Virginia (1967)
- Mandela, Nelson R.
- Manumission
- March on Washington (1963)
- March on Washington Movement (MOWM)
- Marshall, Thurgood
- Massive Resistance
- Mays, Benjamin E.
- McCoy, Elijah J.
- McKissick, Floyd B.
- McKissick v. Carmichael (1951)
- Medicine
- Micheaux, Oscar
- Military
- Milliken v. Bradley (1974)
- Minorities, Racial and Ethnic
- Miscegenation
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
- Mitchell, Clarence M.
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Moore, Harry T.
- Morgan v. Virginia (1946)
- Morrison, Toni
- Moseley-Braun, Carol
- Motley, Constance Baker
- Moynihan Report
- Muhammad, Elijah
- Multiculturalism
- Murray, Pauli
- Music
- Nation of Islam (NOI)
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
- National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW)
- National Association of Colored Women (NACW)
- National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
- National Urban League (NUL)
- Négritude
- Negro History Movement
- New Left
- New Negro Movement
- Niagara Movement
- Norris v. Alabama (1935)
- Obama, Barack H.
- Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity)
- Owens, James C. (Jesse)
- Pan-African Movement
- Parks, Gordon
- Parks, Rosa L.
- Persian Gulf War
- Philanthropy
- Photography
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
- Politics
- Port Chicago Mutiny (1944)
- Poverty
- Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.
- Powell, Colin L.
- Race Labels
- Race Man/Woman
- Randolph, A. Philip
- Reconstruction (1865–77)
- Redistricting
- Religion
- Resegregation
- Rice, Condoleeza
- Robeson, Paul
- Robinson, Jack R. (Jackie)
- Roots
- Rosenwald Schools
- Rustin, Bayard T.
- Scholarship
- Science
- Segregation
- Share Croppers’ Union (SCU)
- Sharecropping
- Shaw v. Reno (1993)
- Sit-ins
- Slavery
- Smith v. Allwright (1944)
- Societies, Mutual Aid
- Sororities
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC)
- Spanish-American War
- Spaulding, Charles C.
- Sports
- State Convention of Colored Men of Texas (1883)
- Student Activism
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971)
- Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
- Talented Tenth
- Technology
- Television
- Temperance Movement
- Terrell, Mary Church
- Theatre
- Thomas, Clarence
- Thurman, Howard
- TransAfrica
- Truth, Sojourner
- Tubman, Harriet R.
- Tuskegee Experiment
- Tuskegee Machine
- Underground Railroad
- United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
- Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
- Vietnam War
- Violence, Racial
- Voter Education Project (VEP)
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Wagner Act (1935)
- Walker, Alice
- Walker, David
- Walker, Madam C. J.
- Walker, Maggie Lena
- Washington, Booker T.
- Weaver, Robert C.
- Welfare
- Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
- Wheatley, Phillis
- White, Walter F.
- Wilder, L. Douglas
- Wilkins, Roy O.
- Williams, Robert F.
- Wilmington Ten
- Winfrey, Oprah G.
- Woods, Eldrick T. (Tiger)
- Woodson, Carter G.
- World War I
- World War II
- Wright, Richard
- Young, Andrew J.
- Young, Plummer B.
- Young, Whitney M.
- Index
- References
Summary
A mirror to African American history, agriculture reflects the long struggle for racial and economic equality.
For two and one-half centuries, most African and Afro-American slaves worked in fields. Among them were rice and tobacco cultivators; fishers, hunters, trappers, and animal herders; and forest cutters and other forestry workers. They produced staple crops (tobacco, rice, indigo, wheat, corn, peanuts) and forged families. Some were permitted to have garden plots and barter their produce, thus earning money to purchase freedom and property. Gradual abolition in the post-Revolutionary North saw many ex-slaves buying farms and creating livelihoods, even as “King Cotton” rose in the South. Most free blacks also lived in plantation areas. Treated as “slaves without masters,” they survived as farmhands and tenants. Sometimes they acquired land and livestock; a small propertied elite held servants and slaves. Slavery, class privilege, and white racism developed side by side.
In the wake of the Civil War and emancipation, ex-slaves equated freedom with self and land ownership and literacy. Thousands earned wages as Union laborers; their children attended missionary-run schools; and freed communities evolved. Tens of thousands of freedpeople farmed family plots at Roanoke Island, North Carolina, Port Royal, South Carolina, and other government farms. But these opportunities ended when Congress authorized the Freedmen's Bureau (1865) and restored abandoned lands to ex-Rebel owners. Freedpeople still hoped for “40 acres and a mule,” or leases on homesteads elsewhere. But most signed Bureau-supervised contracts with cash-strapped landlords, usually as sharecroppers. A sharecropper contributed his labor and half the fertilizer to earn half of the crop. Landlords exacted high interest and often cheated. Sharecroppers who resisted landlords’ rules risked expulsion, whipping, and sometimes death.
Sharecropping mirrored the crop-lien system, which kept farmers and tenants in a vicious cycle of debt. With consignment goods from northern mercantile firms, merchants “furnished” food and supplies; buyers used cash or their crops for credit. Every item in the store had two prices, one for cash and another, higher price for “time” customers who paid interest rates from 25 to 50 percent. Once he agreed to his first crop lien, a farmer of tenant rarely could “pay out.”
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- Information
- The Cambridge Guide to African American History , pp. 9 - 10Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016