How did Sharecropping suppress the rights of Black People?

In the early years of Reconstruction, most blacks in rural areas of the South were left without land and forced to work as laborers on large white-owned farms and plantations in order to earn a living. Many clashed with former slave masters bent on reestablishing a gang-labor system similar to the one that prevailed under slavery.

In an effort to regulate the labor force and reassert white supremacy in the postwar South, former Confederate state legislatures soon passed restrictive laws denying blacks legal equality or political rights, and created “black codes” that forced former slaves to sign yearly labor contracts or be arrested and jailed for vagrancy.

These black codes provoked a fierce resistance among the freedmen and undermined support in the North for President Johnson’s Reconstruction policies. A Republican victory in the Congressional elections of 1866 led to the passage of the Reconstruction Acts in 1867, beginning a new phase of Reconstruction.

During this period, the passage of the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment granted African Americans the right to vote, equality before the law and other rights of citizenship.

Explanation: In short termsIn addition, while sharecropping gave African Americans autonomy in their daily work and social lives, and freed them from the gang-labor system that had dominated during the slavery era, it often resulted in sharecroppers owing more to the landowner (for the use of tools and other supplies.