Direction: Read the following passage carefully and answer the given questions.
After the end of the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, many African Americans and some whites in the rural South made a living by renting small plots of land from large landowners who were usually white and pledging a percentage of their crops to the landowners at harvest-a system known as sharecropping. Landowners provided sharecroppers with land, seeds, tools, clothing, and food. Charges for the supplies were deducted from the sharecroppers' portion of the harvest, leaving them with substantial debt to landowners in bad years. Sharecroppers would become caught in continual debt, especially during weak harvests or periods of low prices, such as when cotton prices fell in the 1880s and '90s. Once in debt, sharecroppers were forbidden by law to leave the landowner's property until their debt was paid, effectively putting them in a state of slavery to the landowner. Between 1880 and 1930 the proportion of Southern farms operated by the tenants increased from 36 to 55 per cent.
Contracts between landowners and sharecroppers were typically harsh and restrictive. Many contracts forbade sharecroppers from saving cotton seeds from their harvest, forcing them to increase their debt by obtaining seeds from the landowner. Landowners also charged extremely high-interest rates. Landowners often weighed harvested crops themselves, which presented further opportunities to deceive or extort sharecroppers. Immediately following the Civil War, financially distressed landowners could rent land to African American sharecroppers, secure their debt and labour, and then drive them away just before it was time to harvest the crops. Southern courts were unlikely to rule in favour of black sharecroppers against white landowners.
That system of debt slavery continued in the South until after World War II when it gradually died out as the mechanization of farming became widespread. So too, African Americans left the system as they moved to better-paying industrial jobs in the North during the Great Migration.