Recovering the Piedmont Past by Grady Timothy P.;Walker Melissa A.;

Author:Grady, Timothy P.;Walker, Melissa A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press

Black People in Agriculture

By 1880 cotton production in the upcountry had already reached levels that surpassed its pre–Civil War high of 6,671 bales in 1850. After producing a mere 2,851 bales of cotton in 1870, Spartanburg County rebounded with the production of 24,188 bales in 1880 and 35,383 bales in 1890.58 The increasing specialization of upcountry farmers in cotton production can be seen also in the amount of acreage dedicated to the staple crop. Between 1880 and 1900 the number of acres planted in cotton in the upcountry increased by 30.3 percent, while the number of acres planted in corn increased by only 14.6 percent.59 According to Lacy Ford, the shift away from subsistence crops and toward cotton production can be attributed to the introduction of guano, a cost-effective fertilizer. Use of guano made it possible to raise cotton profitably on lands previously unfit for the staple crop. In addition railroads lowered transportation costs and spurred the importation of food as well as fertilizer. The depletion of livestock herds as a result of war-time destruction was another factor leading to commercial agriculture. With imported feed grain available at competitive prices, upcountry farmers switched land and labor away from subsistence crops and to cotton.60

Many black people became entrapped in the sharecropper/tenant system on land used to cultivate cotton and other staple crops. David Golightly Harris divided one of his farms in Spartanburg among four former slaves. He charged fixed rent rather than a share of crops, but the tenants also were “to make considerable improvements beside paying the rent.” In 1869 he noted in his journal that a former slave “had built a house, Stable & lot” and another tenant had “cleared and fenced ten acres of new ground.”61 For black agricultural laborers, sharecropping gave them control over their labor and families. According to the historian Vernon Burton, “with emancipation the black male’s desire to control and provide for his family impelled him to elect a tenant arrangement as a compromise labor system.”62 Black sharecropping, writes the historian Jacqueline Jones, allowed “husbands and wives [to] retain a minimal amount of control over their own productive energies. Sharecropping enabled mothers to divide their time between field and housework in a way that reflected a family’s needs. Even more importantly, this system removed wives and daughters from the threatening reach of white supervisors.”63 The downside of sharecropping was that while the landlord furnished the land, shelter, rations, seed, tools, stock, and stock feed, he usually took one-half of the crop. According to Tindall, “this system prevailed widely in South Carolina, although in some sections of the Piedmont, notably Greenville, Fairfield, and Spartanburg counties, the landlord took two-thirds of the crop, leaving only one-third to the laborer.”64 According to Sam Lewis, who was born a slave on Major Hart’s plantation in York County and came to work as a cook in Spartanburg in 1887, “When I got old enough to work (as a freedman) us jus’ kinda rented from de Harts. They furnished us wid mules and groceries and clothes, and us work on de farm.

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