#sharecropper

[todaysdocument]

Contract Between James Mitchell and Dick and Wife

Record Group 105: Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned LandsSeries: Contracts

We the undersigned have this day agreed to hire to James Mitchell for the year 1866 for the following considerations [illegible]. Two bales cotton 500 each ten barrels corn five bushels wheat. Said James Mitchell is to furnish us in meat + bread. We are to furnish ourselves in clothing also we are to pay our own Doc-tors bills We also agree to do any kind of labor Said James Mitchell may deem necessary outside of the crop, and at all times obeying strictly the instruction of the Same Service to commence Jany 1st 1866 close 25th Dec 1866

James Mitchell

Richard X [X mark is in lieu of signature]

Mary X [X mark is in lieu of signature]

Attest

J.W. Wilkes

P.J. Neely

Approved Jany 19th 1866

John D[illegible signature]

[illegible signature] Fenwick [illegible]

[thedrownedcathedral]

Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012). Sharecropper. 1952. Linocut/color linocut on cream Japanese paper.

[tomoleary]

Elizabeth Catlett - Sharecropper (1968) Source

Source

[uphillfarmers]

Land Leases, Farm Incubators: Did we reinvent sharecropping?

Land Leases, Farm Incubators: Did we reinvent sharecropping?

...or worse?

someone in real life told me they read my substack and learned a lot, it was very special to me :)

anyway, new substack - this one's a fairly short read and comes from my eternal rage as a non-landowner trying to farm. enjoy!

[yearningforunity]

Man eating on the porch. Clarksdale, Ms. - 1937

Photographer: Dorthea Lange

[henk-heijmans]

Twelve-year-old son of a cotton sharecropper near Cleveland, Mississippi, 1937 - Dorothea Lange (1895 – 1965), American

[writing-prompts-for-palestine]

#273

Bitter sharecroppers stand in a barren field, a hard winter ahead of them. But as they scream curses to the sky, the sky answers: an angel descends to speak with these mortals.

—

Today’s campaign:

Feras’ family, from Gaza Funds.

€4,877/€25,000 [20%]

Donate to Help Rescue Feras and His Family from War-Torn Gaza", organized by Alkhowas Mohammad

"Hello, everyone, I’m reaching out today to share the st… Alkhowas Mohammad needs your support for Help Rescue Feras and His Family f

[ifelllikeastar]

Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of twenty children and was only six years old when she began working in cotton fields. Her efforts to register to vote in Mississippi in 1962 and 1963 led to full-time activism. As an adult, through an encounter with activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she learned about the power of voting rights to effect change in the structural barriers that families like hers faced.

Because of her views about Black Americans’ constitutional rights, Hamer experienced several harrowing attacks, including a drive-by shooting at a friend’s home and a brutal beating at the hands of police officers in Winona, Mississippi. She was extorted, threatened, harassed, shot at, and assaulted by racists, including members of the police, while she was trying to register to vote.

One day in August 1964, Fannie found herself in the hallway outside of Martin Luther King Jr.’s hotel suite in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Several national civil rights leaders and political operatives were crammed in his suite, strategizing over Black representation at the Democratic National Convention. Prior to the convention, Hamer had helped to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in order to challenge the Democrats’ all-white Mississippi delegation.

Even though Hamer’s home state was under the spotlight, there was apparently no room for her in the talks. When an associate told Hamer that she should “listen to the leaders,” she asked: “Who is the leader?” The men around her with money and degrees actively tried to sideline her. Yet, it was Fannie Lou Hamer, a former sharecropper with limited formal education and limited financial resources, who ended up stealing the show at the convention and captivating the nation with an electrifying speech about voter suppression and state-sanctioned violence against Black Americans.

Born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi and died March 14, 1977 in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, at the age of 59.

* Photo: Fannie Lou Hamer (left) with activist Ella Baker, 1964