Sharecropping was an exploitative system of farming that began in Georgia and was practiced in the American South after the Civil War. Outraged that they had to pay for labor that had been free under slavery, landowners gave newly freed slaves a plot of land to farm in exchange for a share of their crops. To maximize their profits, landowners charged the slaves excessive fees to borrow equipment and supplies needed to farm the land, which kept the Black Americans perpetually indebted to landowners and in poverty, making it nearly impossible for them to become economically independent.
Sharecropping Quotes in The Flowers
The The Flowers quotes below are all either spoken by Sharecropping or refer to Sharecropping. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Flowers
Quotes
She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment.
Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family’s sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence till it ran into the stream made by the spring.
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Sharecropping Term Timeline in The Flowers
The timeline below shows where the term Sharecropping appears in The Flowers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Flowers
...of a song that runs through her mind as she walks away from her family’s sharecropper cabin. She walks along the fence to the spring where her family gets their drinking...
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