Why didn't former slaves become low-wage workers after emancipation?

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Most of the former slaves became sharecroppers. That is, they were paid a percentage of the crops, rather than "straight" wages. Agriculture was all that most slaves knew. Only a small minority were educated and skilled enough to take "industrial" jobs that paid even low wages.

Whites preferred it that way. "Sharecropping" was close to being slavery under another name. Moving former slaves to a wage economy, particularly working alongside white workers would have been an "advancement" that most whites didn't want to encourage. This included not only southern white farm owners but also northern white laborers.

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