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Rural African Americans And Progressive Reform, Debra A. Reid

Debra A. Reid

Histories of African Americans in the postbellum rural South tend to depict sharecroppers and tenants as victims of the crop lien system, racism, and the capitalization of agriculture. This paper concentrates instead on rural re? formers who celebrated life in the country and believed that comfortable homes, better schools, and wholesome residents could free blacks from bondage. Their agrarian ideology reflected Euro-American influences; most believed in the Jeffersonian rhetoric that linked land ownership to virtue and independence. Because they realized that the crop lien system made prop? erty acquisition an impossible dream for most blacks, they advocated diversification and sustainable …