LIFE ON THE FARM NOVMBER 2O11

Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers

By Charles C. Bolton

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Mississippi was an overwhelmingly agricultural state. While farming provided a route to economic success for many white Mississippians, a number of whites could always be found at the bottom of the agricultural ladder, working as tenant farmers or sharecroppers, a status more typically associated with black Mississippians in the century after the American Civil War.

Before examining the history of Mississippi’s white tenant farmers and sharecroppers, some definition of these terms might be helpful. Both tenant farmers and sharecroppers were farmers without farms. A tenant farmer typically paid a landowner for the right to grow crops on a certain piece of property. Tenant farmers, in addition to having some cash to pay rent, also generally owned some livestock and tools needed for

Neal Family Papers 1816-1916  A farm family in the south

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