What did sharecropping represent for many African Americans in the Reconstruction South?

A state of virtual slavery

Explanation:

Sharecropping was the system in which the landowner gives plots of land to a tenant in exchange for a share of harvest. It allowed the tenants to produce more to stay tied to the land.

In the southern US black families rented lands from the white owners and raised crops like rice, tobacco and cotton. The landlords and merchant used to lease the equipment credit, food, fertilisers and seeds on credit until the harvest season.

But this system was not different from slavery as unpredictable harvests, high interest rates kept the black families indebted and the debts had to cried over to the next year. The laws which required the harvest to be sold only to the landlord and prevented the former slaves from changing their landlord if they were indebted to them.

Two third of all the sharecroppers were white and one third were black. Sharecropping faded away in 1940's due to mechanisation, great depression and various other factors in 1940's.