“The Hands That Picked Cotton”

Title “The Hands That Picked Cotton”: Race Discrimination Against Mississippi Delta’s Sharecroppers During the Jim Crow Period from 1896-1965
Author Eyphra Ransom
Affiliation University of Baltimore
Region/Country United States
Pages 43-105
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Permalink https://www.ijlet.org/4.4.3
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Keywords Mississippi; Civil Rights; Jim Crow; Sharecroppers; Discrimination; Race
Abstract This manuscript presents material from diverse sources, enhancing our understanding of race discrimination against Mississippi Delta sharecroppers. Applying Professor Derrick Bell, Jr.’s “interest convergence” principle to slaves and sharecroppers, for hundreds of years, enslaved people were kidnapped from their native homes and sold to wealthy slave owners. They were forced to do exceptionally physically demanding work in America and other countries and live in inhumane conditions. Once the international slave trade ended and slavery in America ended, sharecroppers were still exploited just as slaves had been. Even after planting and picking cotton became mechanized, the sharecropping system remained popular in the Mississippi Delta for many years. Plantation owners continued to earn massive profits from sharecroppers’ cheap labor. White interests wanted sharecroppers to make just enough to subsist to prevent them from improving their condition by purchasing and growing their crops. Under Professor Derrick Bell, Jr.’s interest convergence principle, Mississippi Delta sharecroppers did not achieve racial equality following slavery because the interests of whites did not converge with the interests of blacks.