(narrator)
Chain gangs continued deep 
into the 20th century,
along with other forms 
of forced labor,
including debt peonage 
and sharecropping.

(Mary Ellen Curtin)
A sharecropper will agree 
to work for a percentage 
of the proceeds
of the sale of the cotton crop.
Sharecroppers had to take out loans in order to survive
and in order to bring 
the crop in during the year.

(Adam Green)
50%, 70%, 90% interest rates
were not uncommon
all throughout the South in relation to 
sharecropping finance
of the basic necessities 
that they needed 
to get through the year.
So that system is going 
to put African Americans
in a position where 
upward mobility
is essentially impossible 
for most of them.

(narrator)
Sharecropping also engulfed
growing numbers of whites,
including immigrants.
But without legal 
or political rights, 
black sharecroppers were especially vulnerable. 
Millions of black people 
in remote parts of the South
could not leave the farms 
they were being held on.
If they did, they were subject
to arrest by the sheriff,
and if they were arrested, 
they would then be
returned to the very same farms, 
oftentimes in chains, 
receiving nothing.
Sharecropping is not slavery,
but it did become,
for an enormous population 
of people, forced labor.

(Sharon Malone)
Families stayed intact, 
probably within
a two mile radius 
of where they were born.
Mothers, fathers, cousins, grandparents, everybody stayed.
If you knew by the mere fact 
of leaving, 
exposed you to the danger
of being caught up in this system, it made you stay.
You knew what would happen 
if you stepped off.