7 - Perennial Sharecroppers

Summary

Though their identities extend far beyond this designation, sharecropper families are defined as families in which the children and their parents live on plantations and work for a share of the wages that they and their parents earn. Agnes and Josie were mothers and wives, churchgoers and seekers of housing stability. As croppers, they did not own the several homes they lived in or the lands they worked on. Their economic precariousness is what defined them in the history of the Delta. However, what defines them in this examination is their fullness as human beings-their experiences and desires, successes and failures as wives, parents, workers, and members of the community. It is nonetheless true that their familial experiences and desires cannot be understood except in the context of racial history, mass violence, and economic exploitation. This constellation of the Sunflower Seven permits three vistas from which to gather economic mobility knowledge- from those of perennial croppers, quasi-croppers, and their better-positioned birth peers, Harper and Byrd.