On April 9, 1865, the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union forces. President Abraham Lincoln knew, however, that winning the Civil War would not be the end of the conflict between the northern and southern states. He understood that a “great task” would follow: to bring the southern states back into the Union and to rebuild them after the devastation of war. On April 14, Lincoln was assassinated before he could carry out his plan for Reconstruction of the South. With no plan in place, about four million African Americans, who went from slaves to free people overnight, were left with no means to support themselves.

As a temporary measure after the war, General Sherman of the Union Army had given each freed slave family a plot of land in Georgia as well as one of the Army’s mules for plowing. The provision of “40 acres and a mule” gave African Americans hope that they could establish lives independent lives of their former owners. However, for many this optimism was short lived.

After Lincoln’s death, the task of Reconstruction fell to the new President, Andrew Johnson. Johnson was from the South and wanted to make conditions as easy as possible for white citizens of the southern states. In 1865, Johnson ordered that all southern land be returned to its original, pre-war owners. The former slaves who had been given land had only two choices: they could become homeless refugees, or they could sign labor contracts with the new landowners.

Many white southerners refused to accept former slaves as free and equal citizens of the United States. They saw Africans as an inferior race and wanted to force them back into slave-like servitude to wealthy whites. The occupying Union army hired many former slaves as laborers, but they often treated the African Americans unfairly as well. As the journalist Thomas W. Knox wrote, "The difference between working for nothing as a slave, and working for the same wages under the Yankees, was not always perceptible."

Poor whites in the South had much in common with former slaves, with one major difference: many of the poorer farmers owned a small piece of land and had to pay taxes on it. They resented the idea that their taxes would be used to fund schools and other basic services for the freed slaves, who owned nothing. Some wealthy landowners played on these fears, using them to stir up resentment toward African Americans and win the support for policies and practices that would limit their rights.

With the support of poor whites, the legislatures of southern states quickly passed laws that restricted the freedoms of former slaves. These racist laws interfered with black people's right to own property, to conduct business, to buy and lease land, and even to move freely through public spaces. A particularly cruel set of “vagrancy” laws made it illegal for African Americans to be unemployed, a situation that forced them to accept slave-like labor rather than going to jail. If they were arrested and incarcerated, the prisons in some southern states had the right to rent out their labor.

The Black Codes, as they were called, sparked resistance from both former southern slaves and northern citizens. For example, a convention of African Americans assembled at Zion Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865 to condemn the Black Codes. President Johnson took a hands-off approach, however, effectively siding with white landowners at the expense of African Americans. Northern citizens pushed back against Johnson’s policies by voting for radical members of the party of Lincoln, the Republicans.

Between 1865 and 1870, a period known as Radical Reconstruction, Congress passed new laws to establish the rights of black southerners. These included the 14th and 15th Amendments, which granted African Americans equality under the law and the right to vote. However, Southern states found ways around these laws. Starting in the late 1800s, state and local laws were passed to segregate blacks from whites in all aspects of public life, including buses, restaurants, restrooms, and schools. These “separate but equal” laws were known as the Jim Crow laws. Some Jim Crow laws would remain in place until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Despite some legal progress, African Americans still had few opportunities to own their own land, even well into the 20th century. Rather than work as farm hands under harsh gang-labor conditions, most freed slaves chose sharecropping, a form of tenant farming.

Tenant farming is a system that appears in many parts of the world where there is income inequality: Landowners rent small plots of land to individual farmers, and the farmers pay their rent—either in cash or with a portion of their crops—after the harvest is complete. Tenant farming became widespread in the United States after the Civil War, in part because most plantation owners had no money to hire people to work their land. Instead, they leased parcels to farmers who could not afford to buy their own land. In the case of sharecropping, the poorest form of tenant farming, the landowners supplied farm equipment and other resources as well as the land—and charged hefty fees.

Sharecropping was better than slavery, but sometimes not by much. Both white and black sharecroppers were often at the mercy of dishonest landlords. In some cases, tenant farmers were forbidden to sell their crops to anyone except the landlord, who could set a low price. These conditions often combined with other factors out of sharecroppers’ control, such as bad weather and crop diseases, to keep poor farmers from getting ahead. Worse, they might end up owing more money to the landowner than they earned from their crops. A poor harvest or unexpected equipment expenses could leave a family deeply in debt to both landlords and local merchants. That debt kept the families trapped without a way to change or to improve their lives.

Conditions grew even more difficult for tenant farmers during the Great Depression, when many Americans were out of work. Between 1933 and 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced a series of relief programs called the New Deal to help farmers, the unemployed, and other vulnerable Americans. However, farm aid went to the landowners, not to their sharecroppers.

Some sharecroppers began working together to improve labor conditions and to seek help from the U.S. government. In 1935, a group called the Southern Tenant Farmers Union formed to represent sharecroppers and other tenant farmers. The STFU was an unusual case in which black and white people worked together as equals in the racially segregated South.

In August of 1935, thousands of sharecroppers went on strike. The landowners were furious, and some responded violently. However, the timing of the strike during peak harvest season forced landowners to compromise. In 1936, Congress formed the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a government agency that made efforts to help poor farmers with loans. However, once again, little of this aid went to the tenant farmers. The lives of sharecroppers--particularly African American ones--remained extremely difficult and insecure for as long as the system continued to exist in the South.