About

"Enslavement and Sharecropping in Tallahassee” is a digital exhibit that covers the time of territorial Florida until the 1960s in Tallahassee and its surrounding communities. Ever since the transplanting of enslaved labor and the plantation system from other states to Middle Florida, Tallahassee served as a hub for these economic systems. After reconstruction however, emancipated African Americans experienced enslavement in another form through the agricultural system of sharecropping and saw many so-called freedoms stripped by Jim Crow laws. More than a glance at how these systems functioned though, the big idea of “Enslavement and Sharecropping in Tallahassee” is that the realities of emancipation and Reconstruction can only be understood when compared to enslavement.