Most African Americans did not leave rural areas and move to towns.  They remained in rural areas as impoverished sharecroppers or perhaps renters on worked out land owned by whites.

In the book The African-American Odyssey the authors write, "Many blacks and poor whites were little better off than Medieval Serfs.  They lived in drafty, leaky cabins without electricity or running water.  Outdoor toilets created health and hygiene problems.  Medical care was often unavailable.  Diets were dreary and unbalanced ”mostly pork and cornbread" and deficient in vitamins and protein."

Sharecroppers

Many African American farm families, as well as some whites, were sharecroppers.  They worked the lands of large landowners for a portion or "share" of what they were able to raise.  The landowner usually provided housing, horses or mules, tools, seed and fertilizer as well as food and clothing.  While the contract signed by sharecroppers may have varied, the landowner usually received from one half to three quarters of the crop.

The sharecropping system made it easy to cheat and take advantage of the sharecropper.  By law, verbal agreements were considered contracts.  In many cases, sharecroppers were illiterate and could not have read a written contract.  The landowner told the sharecropper the value of the crop raised, as well as the value of the goods provided to the sharecropping family.  Black farmers who questioned the white landowners put themselves and their families at risk.  Although many blacks knew the landowners' calculations were wrong, they could do nothing about it.

Renters

African American farmers preferred renting over sharecropping, but this wasn't always possible.  As tenants they would pay a set fee to rent a given number of acres.  Payments were made in either cash or, more commonly in a specific amount of the crop.  Tenants usually owned their own animals and tools.  Bessie Jones explained, "You see, a sharecropper don't ever have nothing.  Before you know the man done took it all.  But the renter always have something, and then he go to work when he want to go to work.  He ain't got to go to work on the man's time.  If he didn't make it, he didn't get it."

Liens Against Crops

Besides landowners, sharecroppers and renters often found themselves indebted to the local merchants for clothing, food, farm supplies and tools.  The merchants would agree to advance merchandise, but placed a lien against the crops.  If the sharecropper or rent failed to pay their bill then the merchant was legally entitled to all or part of the crop once the landowner had been paid.  Merchants often charge high prices and high interest rates. 

African American Landowners

Even with the odds stacked against them, black farm families began acquiring land at an astonishing rate after the Civil War.  Many whites refused to sell blacks land, preferring to keep them dependent.  Even when willing sellers could be found, black people found it hard to save enough money to purchase land.

By 1900 more than 100,000 black farm families owned their own land in the deep South.  Between 1879 and 1900 black land ownership increased 500 percent.  Most blacks owned small farms of around twenty acres, but some owned larger holdings.  J.D. McDuffy, a black farmer near Ocala, owned an 800 acre farm where he raised cantaloupes, watermelons, cabbages and tomatoes.