Credit and Its Legal Context in Sharecropping Relations in Postbellum Mississippi Delta: From Ownership to Controlling of Laboring Bodies

This article examines the role of credit and its framing by lien and vagrancy laws in the postbellum Mississippi delta. It is argued that the credit system that was established after the abolition of slavery ensured the control of the formerly enslaved population through the institution of “furnishing.” The credit system of postbellum South represented a new mode of control of the bodies of the laborers through a direct and personal control of their necessary labor. This control was nourished by a legal framework that secured the priority of the landowner's share of the crop over the merchant's and the laborer's. Another important dimension of the mode of control over the bodies of the sharecroppers was the vagrancy laws through the restriction of the mobility of the newly freed laboring populations. All these conditions were embedded in a context of structural and direct violence. Further analyses of this history are necessary in order to understand better some of the existing patterns of racialized capitalism in the United States. JEL Classification: K0, N5, P0, Q1