How did the sharecropping system operate?

It meant that laborers (often former slaves) with no land of their own worked on farm plots owned by others, and at the end of the season landowners paid workers a share of the crop.

This meant that these laborers did not get a salary for their work and might hardly get paid at all in the end if the crops failed. Even with good crops, their share payment was deducted with cost of housing and food.

In this system, the former slaves could be worse off than when they were still slaves when they could at least be sure of being housed and fed.