We have been finishing the unit on Reconstruction over the past two days. Yesterday, we watched a video on Jim Crow Laws. They came about with the creation of a character that portrayed freed slaves in a negative manner to entertain white people. The concept made white people afraid of the freed slaves. In response, they created the Jim Crow Laws to threaten the rights and power of the freed men and women. This was able to occur because Lincoln was assassinated and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 had been declared unconstitutional. Public places like schools and restrooms became segregated. Laws based on ancestry, reading skills, and taxes were passed concerning voting, and often prevented freed slaves from voting. The white people in the South aimed to take power and freedoms away from these people.
Today, we learned about sharecropping. It was the new technique for farming, in which sharecroppers rented land from a planter. They would cultivate the land, then receive some of the profit. The problem was, many sharecroppers owed money to their planters. They could not make a profit or leave the farm until this debt was paid. The sharecroppers had to work under harsh, unfair conditions. In these ways, sharecroppers were almost like slaves. Maybe white people tried to reduce freed slaves to servitude again because they were afraid of losing money and status. Slaves helped many white Southerners to earn a living, but they were now left without any assistance. Though freed slaves legally had many freedoms, white people would selfishly do anything in their power to deny them their rights.
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