Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Weapons, Money, and Diplomacy

Image Courtesy of Washington Note


Weapons, Money, and Diplomacy: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict



The following is the transcript of a recent interview I did with Jeremy R. Hammond of Foreign Policy Journal on his upcoming book concerning the US role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

1. What led you to write this book and is it a follow-up to your book The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination?

It’s funny you should ask! The new book will be the final result of a process that began in earnest during Israel’s ’08-’09 military assault on Gaza, dubbed “Operation Cast Lead”. That event prompted me to want to write a book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I knew I couldn’t write about contemporary events such as that without also providing historical background as context. So I had a grand ambition to provide an overview of the conflict going back to its roots and up through the present day. That idea proved overly ambitious for me at the time, but it did result in The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination.

I continued to keep in mind the book I’d wanted to do on Operation Cast Lead and the U.S.-led so-called “peace process”, however. What prompted me to begin this project in earnest again was President Obama’s May 2011 speech in which he referred to the “1967 lines” as the starting point for negotiations, and the media’s inane response to it as representing some kind of dramatic “shift” in U.S. policy. It was no such thing, as I explain in the forthcoming book.

So it is in some ways a follow-up to my other book, which focuses more on the contemporary history of the conflict while jumping back to provide crucial historical context as necessary to properly understand events. For example, to understand the so-called “peace process”, one needs to understand the roots of the conflict and how Israel came into existence through the ethnic cleansing of three-quarters of a million Arabs from Palestine. A look back at the June 1967 war and its aftermath is necessary to understand events today, and so on.

2. With regards to the US' initial support for Israel, what factors led to the US to go this route and how does the reality of the situation deviate, if at all, from the mainstream narrative?

The U.S. supported Israel from its birth. The Truman administration recognized the newly declared state of Israel on May 14, 1948 literally minutes after this unilateral declaration was made. What we think of today in terms of U.S. support, however—which includes massive military and financial aid (over $3 billion annually) as well as diplomatic support in terms of protecting Israel (such as through the use of the U.S. veto in the U.N. Security Council) from being held accountable for its violations of international law—really began in earnest following the 1967 war, when Israel demonstrated its worth as a regional partner by defeating the combined armies of the neighboring Arab states in just six days, following its surprise attack on Egypt that started the war on June 5.

The mainstream media makes no secret of this U.S. support for Israel, but it at the same time attempts to maintain the narrative of the U.S. as an “honest broker”. This is a farce. The entire U.S.-led so-called “peace process” is the process by which the U.S. and Israel block implementation of the two-state solution based on the requirements of international law, including U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 following the ’67 war, which called on Israel to withdraw from the territories it then occupied and has continued to occupy ever since in keeping with the principle that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible. There is an international consensus favoring the two-state solution. The Palestinians accept it, but it is rejected by Israel and the U.S., which both speak of support for a “two-state solution”. But the “solution” the U.S. and Israel push for is not at all the same thing as the two-state solution. On the contrary, the framework for the “peace process” is one that rejects any application of international law in resolving the conflict.

3. How did the American public feel about supporting Israel?

The American public by and large consents to the U.S. policy of supporting Israel, which in reality means supporting Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and defending its violations of international law. There are many reasons for this. A lot of it has to do with the role of the media in misleading the public about the nature of the conflict and manufacturing consent for U.S. policy. A lot of it also has to do with the sense among many Christians that they must support Israel no matter what. A lot of it has to do with anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry. And so on.

4. When did groups like AIPAC spring up and begin to lobby Congress? Did they face any domestic resistance?

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was founded in 1963. I doubt there was much resistance to its formation, but the history of the lobby isn’t something I’ve much research into. I don’t focus on AIPAC much in my book, mainly because I consider its influence to be relatively unimportant. A lot of people think that this lobby actually drives U.S. foreign policy, but this is a mistaken view. I would posit that if AIPAC ceased to exist tomorrow, U.S. policy would continue as it has. It has some influence in the Congress, but it is not as though U.S. Congresspersons wouldn’t express their support for Israel if it didn’t exist. U.S. policy is determined by U.S. policymakers in terms of their own beliefs and perceptions and American “interests” as they narrowly define them, not by the Israel lobby.

5. Why does the US continue to support Israel when they have spied on and even gone so far as stealing nuclear information from the US, lobbyists aside?

This kind of behavior from Israel is tolerated by the U.S. because it is considered by policymakers to be a valuable strategic partner in the region. One can disagree with this and argue that Israel is in fact a strategic liability. I would agree. But the fact remains that in the minds of U.S. policymakers, Israel is a strategic partner. U.S. and Israeli “interests”, again as narrowly defined by government officials, don’t always align, but they very often do, such as with the goal to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or to get Iran to surrender its right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes under the nuclear non-proliferation agreement (NPT). Even vague talk about Israel in any kind of negative light produces a horrible backlash for any politician. The Obama administration, for example, has come under fire simply for suggesting that Israel should stop its illegal construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank. During his reelection campaign, he was accused by Mitt Romney of “throwing Israel under the bus” for such, even though the level of support Israel has received under the current administration has been unprecedented—the Obama administration vetoed an uncontroversial U.N. Security Council Resolution condemning Israel for this ongoing illegal activity, for example. And as I said, the American people themselves largely hold favorable views towards Israel. Romney was appealing no only Jewish Americans but conservative Christians with his ridiculous substances criticisms of Obama. There was plenty Romney could have criticized Obama about on matters of substance, but he didn’t because Romney holds the same pro-Israeli views as Obama.

6. Why is the US actively against a Palestinian state in practice when such a state wouldn’t be a threat to the security of Israel?

This is an excellent question that doesn’t have just one answer. I’ve already touched on some of the reasons. This kind of support for Israel from the U.S. government, including helping to block implementation of the two-state solution, is institutionalized. Imagine a new administration coming into office and declaring that it was going to abandon the “peace process” that has been going on since the Madrid conference in 1991? It’s unthinkable. No candidate who held such a sensible view of the conflict as to recognize how this process is the very mechanism by which the two-state solution has been blocked could ever get elected.

The purpose of my book is to help change that by exposing the true nature of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians, of the U.S.’s policy towards the conflict, and of the role of the media in manufacturing consent for this policy. For any progress to be made towards peace, U.S. support for Israeli violations of international law must cease. And for that to happen, it must become politically infeasible for it to continue. I want to contribute to making that necessary paradigm shift happen with this book. The U.S. government isn’t going to solve the conflict. We need to step up and take actions to make a just peace possible.

7. How and why have the American public's perception of Israel change over the years, if any perception change has occurred at all? Positively or negatively?

I think the Palestinians have attracted increased sympathies from Americans in recent years. Despite the enormous amount of pro-Israel propaganda, for example, regarding Operation Cast Lead, many people saw threw it and couldn’t reconcile Israel’s claim of “self-defense” with the civilian Gazan death toll and wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure. Then there was Israel’s murderous attack on the Freedom Flotilla, killing nine peace activists aboard the Mavi Marmara. There is a growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement calling for corporate responsibility, e.g., holding accountable businesses that profit from products made in the illegally-constructed settlements in Palestinian territory. Israel has become increasingly isolated in the international community. The E.U. fairly recently issued a new policy guideline, for example, that will require any Israeli company seeking to do business with European entities to declare that it has no connection to the illegal settlements. The tide is turning, slowly but surely. I hope my book will help further these positive developments towards accountability under international law, the pursuit of justice for the Palestinians, and the realization of peace for both sides.

8. Why does the US continue to say that Israel has the right to defend itself while never stating if the Palestinians have a right to self-defense as well?

The simple answer is that while the U.S. interprets Israel’s “right” to “defend” itself to include violations of international law including war crimes, it effectively doesn’t recognize any right of the Palestinians to self-defense. An illustrative example was Obama’s much-touted Cairo speech. I’ll just share an excerpt from the book on this point:

In a much anticipated speech at Cairo University in Egypt on June 4, 2009, President Obama said he was there “to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world” while also stressing “America’s strong bonds” and “unbreakable” relationship with Israel.  
He sought to assure that “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own”, but then proceeded to reiterate the U.S.’s preconditions for this to occur: the Palestinians must “abandon violence”, “recognize past agreements”, and “recognize Israel’s right to exist”—none of which were reciprocally required of Israel. He went so far as to lecture the Palestinians that armed resistance was “wrong”, a judgment that didn’t apply to the U.S. and Israel’s own “violence and killing”, which was rather deemed legitimate by the same president, who would later defend the U.S.’s own frequent use of it during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech by saying that “force may sometimes be necessary” and that the “non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance”.

The hypocrisy is extraordinary, but standard when it comes to prejudice against the Palestinians.

9. Why do both the US and Israel continue to demonize Hamas when in 2006 they offered a full truce to President Bush and more recently in 2012, Hamas offered a long term cease fire with verifications that would have allowed for the two sides to talk?

Hamas has in fact consistently and for a long time expressed its willingness to accept a state of Palestine with borders along the ’67 lines alongside Israel coupled with the offer of a long-term truce. Again, an excerpt from the book:

To cite a few examples, in early 2005, Hamas issued a document stating that goal and “unequivocally” recognizing the pre-June 1967 line as Israel’s border. 
In early 2006, Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar publicly stated that Hamas was seeking a Palestinian state and would accept a long-term truce with Israel if it withdrew from the territories it occupied in 1967. 
Ismail Haniyeh, as already noted, had reiterated to the Washington Post in February 2006 that Hamas would accept an agreement for “the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital with 1967 borders." 
In December 2006, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said that “all the Palestinian factions agree to a return of Israel’s borders to pre-1967 designations.” He said, “We accept the need for two countries to exist, but Israel has no legitimacy so long as the occupation continues.”
Meshal said in January 2007 that Hamas was “with the consensus of the necessity of establishing a Palestinian state on the June 4 borders, including (East) Jerusalem, the right of return and the withdrawal of Israel to these borders.” When asked whether this presupposed the existence of Israel, he answered, “The problem is not that there is an entity called Israel. The problem is that the Palestinian state is non-existent.”  
Meshal explained: 
There will remain a state called Israel. This is an issue of fact, but the Palestinians should not be required to recognize Israel…. As a Palestinian today I speak of a Palestinian and Arab demand for a state on 1967 borders. It is true that in reality there will be an entity or a state called Israel on the rest of Palestinian land…. We are demanding a Palestinian state on the 1967 border including Jerusalem and the right of return. 
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter had met with Hamas officials in April 2008, and reported that they “said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders” and would “accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor next door in peace” if Israel withdrew. Hamas’s “ultimate goal”, Carter said, “is to see Israel living in their allocated borders, the 1967 borders, and a contiguous, vital Palestinian state alongside.” 
Khaled Meshal at the same time had repeated, “We accept a state on the June 4 [1967] line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees but without recognizing Israel…. We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as proof of recognition.” Haaretz explained that “Meshal used the Arabic word hudna, meaning truce, which is more concrete than tahdiya—a period of calm—which Hamas often uses to describe a simple cease-fire. Hudna implies a recognition of the other party’s existence.” 
Haaretz also reported that on November 8, 2008, four days after Israel’s violation of the ceasefire, Haniyeh once again had reiterated that “his government was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.”

There are numerous additional examples cited elsewhere in the book. Despite this fact, it is obligatory for government officials and the compliant mainstream media to parrot that Hamas seeks Israel’s destruction. Why? For the American public to know the truth about Hamas’s actual consistent position since at least 2005 would undermine the goal of manufacturing consent for the U.S. policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Getting Personal

Getting Personal: Looking Beyond Macro Oppression


Image Courtesy of the American Psychological Association


Sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia are all something that most of us have learned about or are currently in the process of learning. While it is important to learn about these different forms of oppression, we must also take into account from what perspective we are taught about oppression and how it is rather incomplete. Rarely, if ever, do we discuss oppression in a personal manner, from how it affects us on an individual level to how we perpetuate systems of oppression through our thoughts and actions.

In general society, from school to the news to the home, we learn about oppression through a macro lens, how society at large has oppressed groups of people. Just some examples of this are the women's rights movement, the genocide of Native Americans, slavery, and the internment of Japanese Americans, among other instances. In today's world there are problems of institutionalized racism and police brutality that affect people on a regular basis. However, this is from a societal perspective and examines how society as a whole, through its political, economic, and social institutions work to keep in place a status quo in which certain groups of people are more privileged than others. Yet, society and its institutions are made up of people who aid in their perpetuation, this it is only logical to understand oppression from the individual level as well.


Oppression can affect individuals in a variety of ways. One only need to look at the cat calls that many women receive on a regular basis from men or the stereotypes that people hold about certain races and ethnic groups and then act upon them. Such actions and thoughts contribute to creating an unsafe environment for the individuals in question and limit the spaces in which they can safely occupy.

However, oppression doesn’t have to be in these large group acts as in catcalling or in thoughts, as is with stereotyping, we can oppress people and create unsafe spaces for them through small actions as well. I’ve personally been in situations in which I was applying for jobs and upon meeting the interviewer, I could hear in the inflection of their voice and their eyes that they had not been expecting me to be black. This surprise on their part triggered a nervous reaction on my part and created a feeling in me that maybe I wasn’t wanted for the position; maybe I wasn’t supposed to work here.

Yet, while this was problematic on my part, the actions of the interviewer, whether they realized it or not, did the actions consciously or not, played a role in perpetuating oppression by making me feel uncomfortable and unwanted due to my race. Now, this is not bought up out of feelings of self pity, but rather to show that the actions of an individual can go to continue oppression.

We can begin to aid in the deconstruction of oppression by taking serious time to reflect on our thoughts and actions, what influenced them, and mentally combating them. If we realize that our thoughts are due to ignorance, we can actively engaged with the people who we are having problems with concerning our prejudiced thoughts or actions. We must fight oppression on the micro level because even if we do away with societal oppression, the situation will remain the same as people will be acting upon their prejudiced thoughts. Only then will we truly be able to have an equal society.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Debt Slavery

Debt Slavery: The Forgotten History of Sharecropping

Originally posted at the Hampton Institute


Image Courtesy of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign


After the close of the Civil War, many assumed that the scar of slavery had been done away with, something to be put into the annals of American history and only to be bought up in classrooms. Yet, the situation in many ways couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Slavery was still around; however it was in a much different form. Besides the convict lease system, which kept black people as slaves within the construct of leasing them out to corporations, there was also sharecropping, which kept blacks tied to the land they worked. In order to obtain a full understanding of sharecropping, the social, economic, and legal contexts under which sharecropping was instituted must first be examined.

Reconstruction

After the Civil War ended the rather short-lived era of Reconstruction came about which saw Union troops occupying former rebel states to ensure that blacks had equal rights and a large rise in the number of black politicians on both the local, state, and national levels. While this was good for black people, there was a dark undercurrent as Reconstruction “exacerbated sectional and political tensions and economic recovery problems.”[1] Due to the Civil War, the entire South was engulfed in economic troubles as with physical slavery abolished; plantation owners now had to pay wages to their workers. Yet the implementation of a wage system was problematic as “the South’s quasi-feudal plantation system was not well-suited for a modern, free labor force.”[2] In addition to this, former slaves were quite reluctant to work in the fields for subsistence-level wages.

Having a wage labor economy was near futile as economically speaking; the entire South was in shambles, especially with regards to currency as “Circulating currency was in short supply,” the Confederate currency was useless, “the banking system was practically destroyed and, crucially, planters, farmers and landowners could not borrow money to pay freedmen to work their land for them.”[3] Planters were left in economic ruins as few were able to use their now ruined land as collateral for loans. Poor harvests only exacerbated the problems as planters found themselves unable to attain sufficient crops to gain enough money to hire wage laborers. Yet, the most important factor in this was that “freedpeople had altogether higher aspirations than being simply wage laborers on large centrally organized plantations.”[4]

To address this problem, Congress established the Freedman’s Bureau, whose purpose it was to aid former slaves and refugees and to handle abandoned land. They were also given the task of supervising labor contracts. Initially, Congress envisioned “that the Bureau would undertake the role of umpire in ensuring that the contracts reflected the free interplay of market forces”[5] and gave Commissioner Major General Oliver Howard, explicit instructions as to what contracts and contractual terms could not be dictated by the Bureau.

Yet, this did not solve the South’s labor problem as both planter and freedmen “had little initial idea of what the optimal labor arrangements would be. They had to be discovered by a process of experimentation.”[6] The experimentation began when former slaves begrudgingly entered into labor contracts with planters who still expected them to work in ways quite similar to what they had experienced under slavery. Most planters still believed that blacks needed supervision, Whitelaw Reid noted that most Southerners held the belief that “'niggers wouldn't do more 'n half as much, now that the lash was no longer behind them.”[7] To this end, in the name of ensuring that blacks would work, “they sought to restore gang labor, centralized plantations, and the close supervision of the work and social lives of their new laborers, which, to their mind, were central to the economics of plantation slavery.”[8] While this new system was a compromise between worker and employer, a deal which neither group particularly was fond of, it was one in which blacks had some autonomy, an asset which they leveraged to make the system of sharecropping less oppressive.

Black Autonomy

During slavery, the black family was in a way nonexistent due to the bitter and bleak reality that a family member could be sold off at any time, for almost any reason whatsoever. Thus, when freedom came about, it made sense that former slaves went to great lengths to seek out and reestablish their families. “These attempts to restore families and redirect their labor to serve the needs of the household rather than the planter, were integral to the self-sufficiency that freedpeople sought from sharecropping.” For a time there existed sizable labor shortages, which gave more power to the former slaves and allowed them to “contribute decisively to the contours of the new labor system that was awkwardly being constructed.”[9] Rather than large centralized plantations, blacks had them broken into smaller plots of land and chain gangs were replaced by family and kin-group labor that managed the land.

This collective share arrangement was adopted by both planters and former slaves as planters considered it a group incentive scheme and the former slaves saw it as an opportunity to decrease the amount of outside supervision. The preference blacks had for family-level sharecropping lied “in the increased effectiveness of the incentives implicit in the share arrangement, more closely matching effort and reward at the individual family level, and in the preference that freedmen showed for family farming over collective arrangements.”[10] Though for the little black autonomy that did exist, it was overshadowed by the economics and legal effects of sharecropping.

Economics and the Law

Sharecropping, while influenced by black autonomy, was overall negative for black farmers as such a system “allowed the exploitation of the small farmer by the monopolistic financial structure dominated by the local merchant,” as the farmer (in this case the black family) was unable to access alternative sources of credit to acquire needed supplies and thus the farmer was forced to use his future crop as collateral to finance the loan which “bound the farmer to the merchant and restricted his options to buy elsewhere or dispose of his crop in the most advantageous manner.”[11] Due to his need to pay back the loan, the farmer focused on growing a cash crop such as cotton, to the neglect of food production, thus forcing the farmer to borrow even more money from the merchant as to feed himself. This created a cycle where the farmer was constantly behind in his paying his debt. It also didn’t help that the credit prices that the farmer was charged so he could purchase food “were exorbitant, reflecting not only the local merchant's inefficiency, but his exploitative powers as the sole source of rural credit.”[12] Thus, the farmers stayed in perpetual debt and slavery perpetuated itself, but rather than a physical slavery, it was an economic bondage that held black people to the land.

Another factor in the economics of sharecropping was that the landowner could also provide loans to the sharecroppers. Once again, the future crop was used as collateral against the loan, yet in the 1870s, the Tennessee legislature legalized this practice which, in part due to the corrupt local authorities and the rulings of state courts, resulted in having horrid results for the sharecroppers.

Since 1825 a law had been in place allowing for future crops to be utilized as IOUs to landlords; however the law only applied to the collection of cash rent. In 1870 the legislature passed a law which stated “that under certain conditions a loan by the owner to the cropper for equipment and workstock constituted a lien against the cropper's share of the proceeds.”[13] The legislation did not allow for liens to be carried over from the previous year and mandated that the transaction be in writing. The law was amended in 1875 as to include croppers’ debts to their landlords for supplies used in family consumption. While the legislature did attempt to protect sharecroppers from fraud, they were quite ineffectual as “local authorities ignored violations of the laws and state courts stripped [fraud protection laws] of their legislative intent” which resulted in landowners having the ability to carry debts over year after year. This economic power not only gave them better security for their loans, but also “gave them greater control over their black croppers.”[14]

Besides the law, contract provisions also hurt sharecroppers. Contract terms which assessed “penalties for noncompliance or neglect on the part of the cropper likewise enhanced the landowners' control”[15] as if croppers failed to cultivate the specified amount of land, consequences could be extremely damaging. One contract stated that such a failure would bind the sharecroppers "to pay for fifty acres of corn land at seven dollars per acre & ten (10) acres of tobacco land at twelve dollars & fifty cents per acre in money”[16] where another contract stipulated that the landowner had the privilege of dismissing him entirely. While such terms appeared in the contracts of both white and black farmers, they were more prevalent in the contracts of black farmers. By having the power to dictate the terms of the contract, landowners “could control black croppers during working hours and, perhaps, be situated to dominate them and their families during nonworking hours as well” and there is evidence, “both direct and inferential, that landowners sought to use the system for this purpose.”[17] In some cases, if sickness or accident prevented sharecroppers from meeting their obligations, the landowner had the power to outsource the work at the sharecroppers’ expense.

While such provisions reflected an assumption that blacks were unable to manage a commercial enterprise, it is maintained by many historians that the provisions were an “effort by white southerners in general to hold freedmen, the large majority of whom became sharecroppers, in a subordinate status after emancipation.”[18] Yet, while black sharecroppers in many ways remained subordinate to white landowners, the situation was worse for black women as for them, sharecropping combined the oppression of debt peonage and black patriarchy within the family.

Black Women

While slavery was brutal, there was actually gender equality among black men and women. Though the plantation system was based on patriarchy, “the domesticity in the enslaved cabin at the quarters was, ironically, about as close an approximation to equality of the sexes as the nineteenth century provided. An androgynous world was born, weirdly enough, not out of freedom, but out of bondage."[19] Yet, with sharecropping, black gender relations changed with the empowering of the black male to create a patriarchal family model.

While black female labor played a large role in producing income for families under the sharecropping model, their work was subjugated to the interests of black men as “male croppers controlled the labor of family members and, hence, held more power than women held over income and property.”[20]

Family sharecropping was not just the preferred model for the black family as a whole, but also for black women. Many times freedwomen rejected field work as they were paid less than men, but also due to gang and squad labor putting them in close proximity to white landowners and overseers who would abuse them.

However, while family sharecropping benefited black women, it was also used as a form of control by white landowners as many held the view that "Where the Negro works for wages, he tries to keep his wife at home. If he rents land, or plants on shares, the wife and children help him in the field."[21] In their view, by allowing family sharecropping the landowner could ensure the stability of their labor and add to the labor pool by having the entirety of the black family work in the fields.

Black patriarchy was rather problematic for black women as “fathers could legally use corporal punishment to discipline their wives and children.”[22] In some cases, such discipline was contractually specified. Thus, not only was the black woman afflicted by the negative economic effects of sharecropping in the form of debt peonage, but also the social affects were harmful to them, especially due to sharecropping empowering and upholding black patriarchy.

Sharecropping eventually ended due to mechanization and the Great Migration[23], yet the effects of sharecropping, compounded with slavery and the convict lease system had a negative multi-generational impact on the black community as a whole as rather than being able to work and obtain and pass down capital as to aid in the economic growth of the black community, it resulted in economic stagnation that would only increase racial economic disparity.


Endnotes

1: John J. McDermott, “Reconstruction and Post-Civil War Reconciliation," Military Review 89:1 (2009) pg 67

2: McDermott, pg 68

3: Ian Ochiltree, “Mastering the Sharecroppers: Land, Labor and the Search for Independence in the US South and South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 30:1 (2004), pg 43

4: Ochiltree, pg 43

5: Ralph Shlomowitz, “The Origins of Southern Sharecropping,” Agricultural History 53:3 (1979), pg 588

6: Shlomowitz, pg 568

7: Ochiltree, pg 44

8: Ibid

9: Ibid

10: Shlomowitz, pg 572

11: Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, “Debt Peonage in the Cotton South After the Civil War,” The Journal of Economic History 32:3 (1972), pg 642

12: Ibid

13: Donald L. Winters, “Postbellum Reorganization of Southern Agriculture: The Economics of Sharecropping in Tennessee,” Agricultural History 62:4 (1988), pg 10

14: Winters, pg 11

15: Winters, pg 13

16: Ibid

17: Winters, pg 14

18: Ibid

19: Willie Lee Rose, Slavery and Freedom (New York, Oxford University Press, 1982) pg 29

20: Susan A. Mann, “Slavery, Sharecropping, and Sexual Inequality,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14:4 (1989), pg 7

21: Mann, pg 11

22: Mann, pg 12

23: PBS, People and Events: Sharecropping in Mississippi, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/e_sharecrop.html