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Title: Where Have All the Sharecroppers Gone? Black Occupations in Postbellum Mississippi

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 1998

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Abstract: Challenges the conventional wisdom that the majority of African Americans in the postbellum South were sharecroppers or tenant farmers working family-sized farms. Compares the agricultural and population manuscript census schedules for two counties in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta - Washington and Tunica - for evidence that discrepancies between expected and enumerated numbers of tenant farmers are the result of enumerator error or misinterpretation. Enumerator interpretations show bias toward both overcounting and undercounting African-American farms. Even with the most generous interpretations of enumerator designations of African-American farmers, fewer than half of African Americans could be identified as workers of family-sized farms; most were agricultural and nonagricultural laborers.

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Authors: O'Brien, AP; Irwin, JR

Periodical (Full): Agricultural History

Issue: 3

Volume: 72

Pages: 280-297

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity

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