After the civil war ended, the system of sharecropping began and it gave white landowners economic dominance in the Southern economy.
When the American Civil War ended in 1865, along with the slavery system common in the Southern states, the white landowners of the south tried to establish a new labor force and the freed blacks, though they didn't have enough money, sought for economic independence and autonomy.
As a result, they established an agriculture system in which landowners, mostly Southern whites, would give a small plot of land to a freed family or individual so they can work on it and, in return, share the crops produced to the owner at the end of the year.
This way, the sharecropping began in the U.S. and gave white landowners economic dominance in the Southern economy.