Illustration depicting emancipated slaves who became sharecroppers in the post-Reconstruction American South. Sharecropping became widespread as a response to economic upheaval caused by the emancipation of slaves and disenfranchisement of poor whites in the agricultural South during Reconstruction. Plantations had first relied on slaves for cheap labor. Prior to emancipation, sharecropping was limited to poor landless whites, usually working marginal lands for absentee landlords. Sharecropping was one of few options for penniless freedmen to conduct subsistence farming and support themselves and their families. Sharecropping was an easy way for white former slave owners to take advantage of uneducated freedmen. Former slaves had little to no education, so the landowner could draw up a 70-30 contract instead of half.