Many African Americans became trapped in a vicious cycle of debt after the civil war mainly because?

Many African Americans became trapped in the vicious cycle of debt mainly because planters and former slaves often became part of the farming system known as sharecropping for the farmer.

At the start of every crop cycle, each sharecropper signed a contract with a local merchant. Under its provisions, the farmer received supplies from the merchant as a loan; in exchange the merchant received what was named a lien on the crop, denoting that the merchant would control the marketing of the crop and take repayment of the loan from sale of the crop later on.

The merchant charged a great price for the supplies (the credit price, as opposed to the lower cash price) and added a high interest rate. Then, after the harvest, the merchant traded the crop and credited the sharecropper with what was recognized as the “inside price,” which was lower than the market price that the merchant had actually received.

Not shockingly, at the end of the agricultural year the farmer's debt to the merchant was bigger than his income from the crop; in other words, the sharecropper owed the merchant money!

The contract provided that in such a circumstance, the farmer had to once again give the merchant a lien on the crop. This regularly continued for a lifetime, with the debt always growing and the sharecropper completely dependent on the merchant for survival.

Spring Lake District Library is just one of 50 institutions across the nation chosen to host a unique, historical traveling exhibition about the 16th president of the United States -- Abraham Lincoln. The exhibition, “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War". Learn more at MLive.com.