sharecropper

When growing up in the 1910s, blues singer-guitarist Robert Johnson moved from Mississippi to Memphis, Tenn., and then Arkansas, before settling in the Mississippi Delta when his mother married a sharecropper.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 23, 2026

Civil rights activist and former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer was weary when she spoke alongside Malcolm X at a church in Harlem in December 1964.

From Salon ● May 28, 2026

“My grandmother was a sharecropper in Arkansas, and I know that this is the same thing,” a man shouts at one point as whistles shrill and a handheld siren wails.

From Slate ● Feb. 11, 2026

Miles Caton, actor: The first time I got the script, they prompted it as a 19-year-old sharecropper who’s a musician, and he would have been Sam Cooke if it was 20 years later.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 17, 2025

At night, seated at a crude table, with a kerosene lamp spluttering at my elbow, I would fill out insurance applications, and a sharecropper family, fresh from laboring in the fields, would stand and gape.

From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright

A soft-spoken young man, Jesse Owens was the son of black Alabama sharecroppers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026

My parents were sharecroppers in Arkansas until 1951, when my dad dared stand up to his boss for not paying him a fair wage at the agricultural weigh station.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 2, 2025

"I come from a proud line of sharecroppers and cowboys. My grandfather was buried in his cowboy boots," she shares.

From BBC ● Mar. 1, 2024

Lewis was born in 1940 as one of 10 children of Alabama sharecroppers and rose to become an icon of the Civil Rights Movement and a lion of the U.S.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 26, 2024

The rancher provided the land and plants, but the sharecroppers were responsible for everything else.

From "Breaking Through" by Francisco Jiménez