Children, grandchildren, etc of sharecroppers, what do you do now?

24 comments

1. Congratulations to you, but more importantly your family! It is a testament to their sacrifices that you are where you are now.

   While not a descendant of a sharecropper, I’m not far off. 4 generations ago were ancestors working in the steel mills described by Upton Sinclair. They came here penniless. Worked in horrible conditions. Grandfather was a legitimate hobo riding boxcars in the Great Depression and then scraping by in steel mills. Dad was the first college graduate. And I’m more successful than any of them could have imagined. Each generation sacrificing for the next. It’s an amazing country.

2. I have nothing to add to your original topic, but that is awesome what you are doing and have done. Get after it.

3. I don’t have anything to add. My family historical were mostly poor farmers but not sharecroppers.

   What really strikes me is that your *father* was a sharecropper. It reminds you that part of our history isn’t all that far into history.

   Congrats to you and your family though. That’s a hell of an accomplishment over a few generations.

4. My grandmother grew up on a sharecropper farm. As an adult, she worked various retail jobs and in a Levi’s factory making jeans. My mom is a nurse. I work in politics. Among the other grandchildren, we have various levels of education and jobs, including an attorney, a school administrator, a postal worker, an electric lineman, a carpenter. etc.

5. My grandmother grew up as a sharecropper. During WW2 she moved in with her aunt and uncle in Charlotte to go to secretary school (young women weren’t allowed to live on their own). After he got back from the pacific she met my grandfather and got married. Thanks to the GI bill he was able to go to college and was an architect, my dad ended up becoming a nuclear engineer.

   There was a lot from the share cropping in the Great Depression that stuck with my grandma. Like she’d make cookies without sugar. Most frugal person on the planet. She also told the best stories until Alzheimer’s took them from her. I named my daughter after her.

   She was the oldest of 9 kids (maybe there’s some speculation that her youngest sister was actually her daughter. 17 years apart, grandma moved to Charlotte right after she was born. Always very maternal with her little sister). The women scattered amongst the piedmont of NC. The men stayed and worked on the farm and died early.

6. My great-grandparents came from generations of sharecroppers. They were dirt poor, and my grandparents grew up in deep poverty. They worked very hard to claw their way out of it. It took decades, but they eventually became middle class landowners. That land remains in our family today.

   My mother was the first in the small rural town to go to college. My cousin and I are college educated and have done well for ourselves. My child has no concept of the poverty her ancestors came from.

7. My grandparents were sharecroppers.

   I’m the first woman in my family with a masters and I work in corporate America. Fortunately education was a big priority with my parents and grandparents. Makes a big difference

8. My greatgrandpa was a sharecropper, and so was my grandpa.

   My grandma styled wigs after growing up sharecropping. My mother was a cosmetologist, and so was I. My grandpa died from brain cancer in the early 1970s.

   Now, my mother is an accountant (after cancer), and I am finishing up my degree in Human Services (due to unrelated nerve damage) to work in drug and alcohol counseling. My uncle is a gold miner, but he does have a degree in Business Management. My aunt, mom’s sister, has a doctorate in Library Science and makes $$$$. She’s done the best of us by far. She’s the records keeper for a major corporation and loves her job.

9. My grandfather was a sharecropper. My father and all his siblings grew up sharecropping as kids but they all ended up doing very well for themselves. 5 of 7 graduated college. 5 started their own businesses. 2 kept farming, albeit not sharecropping obviously. I certainly didn’t experience anything like that but I always enjoy listening to what those times were like. My father always described it as a happy childhood but they didn’t really have a concept of how poor they were because pretty much everyone in the area were in similar straits.

10. Sharecropping used to be the normal economy in most of the world. Maybe you could clarify that as American sharecroppers?

11. My grandfather was a share cropper during the Great Depression in east Texas. The reason he was able to escape life on the farm was by graduating high school and joining the Marines during WWII.

    I’m a data scientist. One of my brothers is a medical salesman, the other works in supply chain. We are all college educated and each of us earns well above six figures in our respective careers.

12. Grandchild, though my sharecropper forebear went to work doing construction on “the defense plants” (near Texarkana) as WW2 approached, and never returned to farming.

    I was the first on either side of my family to get a college degree. I have a law degree, but I work as a graphic designer and cartographer.

13. My grandfather was a sharecropper when he was just starting out in life. He bought his own farm in the mid 60s.

    His kids went on to be a paralegal and two factory workers.

    I’m the only grandkid, I became a Linux System Admin and Software Engineer.

14. My great grandfather was a sharecropper. His son was a migrant worker. My dad got a community college degree and works for the county. I program robots.

15. My paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were sharecroppers, though my family actually owned quite a bit of property before the American Civil War. My father and his siblings grew up working on farms, and eventually moved into working in textile mills, but my father eventually went on to work a union job on the assembly line at General Motors. He only finished the 3rd grade before he was pulled out of school to work the crops. He always made sure that we went to school because he saw that as an opportunity he never had. Before he went to work at GM, he would often work two or three jobs to provide for the family.

    Anyway, i joined the military at 17, spent 21 year in training and on submarines in nuclear engineering, went to college and grad school while in the Navy, then retired from the Navy at 38, went to work in high tech as a Project Manager, and then retired from that job after 20 years. Now, I’m happily retired and enjoying my photography, my grandkids, and my other activities. My father is 87 and lives on a fine piece of property he will leave to me and my brother when he is gone. I live a hugely different life than my grandparents.

16. Not sharecropper, but my grandpa was one of 10 siblings who grew up on a farm in rural NC. It always amazed me how just a few generations ago they didn’t have jobs, they just tended their land and that’s how they lived. There was no running to the grocery store, everything was grown on the farm or traded with neighbors for what they didn’t have. One of my favorite stories of his was when he was about 12 years old, finding a nickel in between the boards on the front porch and walking 3-4 miles to the nearest country store and buying a pepsi.

17. My great-grandparents were cotton sharecroppers in Mississippi. They eventually packed it in and moved to an Alabama cotton mill village. They lived into the 2010s. They didn’t have electricity into the 1950s but by the time she died my Granny was an avid iPad user. Crazy.

    I am the first person in my family to go to university and am a lawyer. Grew up in the Deep South in a trailer park.

18. You have to go back pretty far in my family tree to find sharecroppers, but they were there. I’m a tech consultant, my dad was a teacher and librarian, his dad was a Naval Aviator, and his father drove an ice truck.

19. My grandparents were sharecroppers and both my parents worked in the fields as children.

    My parents were successful and are retired now. My dad managed to earn his Ph.D

    My sister is an elementary school principal and I am a former journalist turned public information officer.

20. Father’s side, my grandfather grew up as a share cropper. Same for my mother’s side of the family. One of my close uncles and myself are the first people in our immediate family to get college degrees and have well/decent paying office jobs.

21. My grandparents on both sides were sharecroppers. My maternal grandparents were dirt poor and my mom had a really hard childhood. Neither of her parents could read, and yet somehow my mom managed to finish high school. She did well with a small career once marrying my dad and they hammered out a nice, middle class lifestyle. I’m in a professional role at a large corporation. I would say I did the best if any of my maternal cousins. However, my paternal cousins have all done pretty well.

22. Not a share cropper but friends who do this. They still share crops, but now they grow Marijuana for big pot companies legally. Apparently, Kentucky has really great soil for it.

23. My mom said her biological dad was a sharecropper, but he was actually more of an independent farmer. He rented equipment, but not land. It’s a pretty proud aspect of our family.

    The grandpa I know was a sharecropper in the area that he and my grandma lives in now. At the time, it was way in the country, but now it’s just a part of the city.

    I recently graduated college. We celebrated at my grandparents’ house. Most of my grandparents on my mom’s side didn’t finish grade school, so they were really proud that I was able to get a degree. I might be the second to do so on my mom’s side, after my mom herself.

24. I used to have a neighbor whose family was one of the last sharecropping ones in Prince George’s County, MD (outside Washington DC). He became a mechanic & worked for the Natl Park Service for a lot of years. It wasn’t glamorous, but a decent living & he was able to retire comfortably. He had lots of friends & was active in the community.

    I’d like to think he was still doing well. But the odds aren’t in his favor. He was diabetic & in his 60s when I moved 12 years ago. Overall though, his life beat the hell out of sharecropping.