The right answer is “sharecropping”. With the southern economy in alarm after the abolition of slavery and the destruction of the Civil War, conflict ascended during the Reconstruction era between many white landowners trying to reestablish a labor force and unfettered blacks looking for economic independence and autonomy. They found a replacement for slavery called sharecropping. This is a sort of farming in which families rent small subversions of land from a property-owner in return for a portion of their produce, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.