So this is what goes on in 1865 ... coming out of slavery. Did sharecropping keep freed slaves in poverty permanently? Ed Ayers: One of the miracles of the Reconstruction era and the period ...

In The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896, the latest installment of the multi-author Oxford History of the United States ...

However, after Reconstruction, many Southern black men ... workers became indebted to planters (through sharecropping loans), merchants (through credit), or company stores (through living expenses).