The contract of Marshall County, Mississippi 1867 was a sharecropping arrangement. Under this agreement, recently freed African American slaves were allowed to rent small portions of land from their former slave masters to farm in return for a share of their crops. The sharecropping system was a way for former slaves to gain access to land and enable them to support themselves and their families. However, the system also allowed landowners to maintain control over the labor of former slaves and perpetuate their economic disadvantage.
