sharecropper

noun

share·crop·per | \ ˈsher-ˌkrä-pər

Definition of sharecropper

: a tenant farmer especially in the southern U.S. who is provided with credit for seed, tools, living quarters, and food, who works the land, and who receives an agreed share of the value of the crop minus charges

Examples of sharecropper in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The men took the sharecropper out of the car, hanged him from a tree and shot him. — Vanessa Gregory, New York Times, "A Lynching’s Long Shadow," 25 Apr. 2018 Down Home’s graphic icon is of Herschel Thompson, Reeves’ late grandfather, a church deacon and a Walton County sharecropper. — Montana Couser, The Root, "Meet the 1st Black Brewers of Georgia," 25 June 2018 The film's politics also remain vague because the sharecroppers are worse off in the present than 30 years earlier. — Boyd Van Hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter, "'Happy as Lazzaro' ('Lazzaro Felice'): Film Review | Cannes 2018," 13 May 2018 The daughter of a sharecropper from South Carolina, Hunter trained as a nurse then came to Cleveland to attend Marshall Law College. — cleveland.com, "Women's History Month: 33 of Cleveland's most influential, interesting women," 19 Mar. 2018 Class described the difference between a sharecropper and a plantation owner, between the enslaved person being worked to death in a Caribbean sugar field and an investor living in London on dividends from the sugar trade. — Jedediah Purdy, The New Republic, "The Remaking of Class," 27 June 2018 At the time, the town of Money was controlled by a white minority and much of the black population, including Wright, were sharecroppers. — Gabby Raymond, Time, "The Justice Department Has Reopened Its Investigation of Emmett Till's Murder. Here Are 5 Things to Know About the Case," 12 July 2018 On a September night in 1944, Mrs. Taylor, then a 24-year-old sharecropper, was raped by six white men. — Gabe Cohn, New York Times, "What’s on TV Monday: ‘The Rape of Recy Taylor’ and ‘Strangers’," 2 July 2018 His parents were sharecroppers before joining together with their children in the 1970s to form the Ellison Family Gospel group, which recorded four albums. — Sarah Nassauer, WSJ, "J.C. Penney CEO Quits to Join Lowe’s," 22 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'sharecropper.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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The first known use of sharecropper was in 1923

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More Definitions for sharecropper

sharecropper

noun

English Language Learners Definition of sharecropper

: a farmer especially in the southern U.S. who raises crops for the owner of a piece of land and is paid a portion of the money from the sale of the crops

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