Agriculture and Agricultural Labor

Abstract

The agricultural and farm labor history of African Americans extends across more than four centuries, from slavery beginning in the early 17th century to freedom resulting from the Civil War to a small number of independent farm owners by the early 21st century. Prior to the Civil War, slavery primarily served as an agricultural labor system. During the colonial period, only a few free African Americans owned land and farmed independently, but most worked in some fashion as slaves, producing tobacco and rice, tending livestock, and processing food. In 1794, Eli Whitney patented the first efficient cotton gin for processing short-staple cotton. With this invention, much of the South became a major cotton-producing region with a great need for cheap labor, which African Americans unwillingly provided. The Civil War ended slavery as an agricultural labor force, but the landless African Americans remained tied to large-scale farmers and planters as sharecroppers. In this agricultural system, sharecroppers essentially rented the land and paid the landlord with a portion of the crop, usually 50 percent, and the landlord told them how to conduct their farm work. They lived in a netherworld bound by degradation, poverty, and hopelessness. By the turn of the 20th century, more than 707,000 African American farmers remained impoverished by the crop lien and furnishing merchant system and usually farmed no more than fifty acres. They were free but their lives remained constrained by racism, which limited their access to capital for the purchase of land, machinery, livestock, seed, and fertilizer. Beginning with World War I, many African American farmers left the land for better opportunities elsewhere. By the mid-20th century, African American farmers remained impoverished because the agricultural lending programs of the federal government, particularly those of the Department of Agriculture, discriminated against them. African American farmers frequently met rejection when they applied for loans and other government assistance that would enable them to improve their agricultural activities. Most African American farmers, in the North and the South, owned too-little land to produce sufficient crops and livestock to earn a satisfactory living. The 21st century brought little change. Those who remained often held off-the-farm employment to keep their farms viable. Racism continued to color social and economic relationships with whites, credit institutions, and the federal government. Moreover, African American farmers often produced for local and specialty markets, and they chose agriculture as a lifestyle rather than as a commercial, moneymaking endeavor.