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if the Black Codes were like slavery in disguise then

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sharecropping was like slavery barely even trying to be in disguise. seriously

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it was like we're in one of those plastic noses with the glasses and [men in disguises]

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mustache. zero efforts. let's travel back in time for a moment to the very end of

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the Civil War and Sherman's march to the sea. well general william t sherman led

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his troops into georgia and the carolinas freeing tons of slaves as they [Sherman holding a torch]

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went, but by January 1865 they had a problem. refugees. Sherman solution

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special field order number 15. This order stated that every family that had [Kids looking happy]

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been freed from a plantation would be given some mules and 40 acres of land on

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the Georgia coast. beach front property yeah, but they weren't going to be

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sunbathing with those mules. still compared to slavery this wasn't a bad [Man hula hooping on a beach]

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idea now let's fast forward three months. President Andrew Johnson announced that

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all land and probably mules would be given back to the original owners. that

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would be the slave owners. ouch. So this left of freedmen with little choice [Guy holding no trespassing sign in a field]

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except to sign labor contracts or go back to being landless refugees. so black

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laborers were not pleased with having to be laborers on white owned property [ men loading pack mules]

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again. and it was especially bad because their masters wanted to bring back the

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gang labor system, which was a lot worse than captain cool in the gang labor

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system. but that was a different song so ask your parents. this is system working

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hard all day with no breaks hashtag TBT slavery. the southern states made things [People working in a textile factory]

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even worse for black laborers by making them signed year-long contract. well

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remember the Black Codes from earlier these contracts were terrible and once [Guy wearing a mask]

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again trap blacks in lives of servitude. it was a deal with the devil but it

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would be only deal on the table for freed slaves. how come we never hear [Man begging in hell]

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about deals with angels? oh that'd be nice for a change. the reconstruction

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acts in 1867 in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment tried to help, but

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they let the real culprit sharecropping slip right under their nose.

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sharecropping was basically like renting land from the white owners but instead [Workers in a field]

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of getting wages workers were just given a share

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the crops they had helped to farm. plantation owners were like thanks for [Man holding cotton]

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all the toil in the hot Sun now here's some crappy cotton. well we're just going

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to come out and say it sharecropping sucked. the ironic thing was that it wasn't [man frowns in front of cotton field]

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only bad for free blacks it was also bad for the economy of the entire

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white-dominated South. the south economy was already shaky compared to the north's

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and sharecropping only made the South even more dependent on King Cotton which [People taking from a king covered in cotton]

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should have been renamed poor guy cotton because prices of cotton were falling

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fast. also people renting the land former slave always ended up being in debt to

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the person they were renting from. a few people were able to make it out and get [Landowner collecting money]

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their own land but most were sucked back into debt, then mix in a heaping mound of

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discrimination into this whirlpool of debt we've got a cycle of poverty that

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far too many african-americans are still trying to escape today. if sharecropping [Debt going round in a washing machine]

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didn't want people to know it was like slavery and should have bought a better

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disguise. like seriously don't go to Kmart at least get one from one of the

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good old costume stores yeah or even amazon. [man wears Darth Vader costume]

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