Answer: A) Landowners.
Step-by-step explanation:
Sharecropping is practice whereby a person rents land from the landowner to enable them farm the land. At the end of the year, they would give a portion of their produce to the landowners.
This was practiced in the South after the Civil War and massively benefitted the landowners because the sharecroppers were usually newly freed Black Americans who were pushed into debt due to the Sharecropping system.
This happened because the tools to grow on the land also had to be rented from the white landowners and with the price of cotton falling and with the crop sometimes failing, the sharecroppers would owe whatever they were supposed to pay that year regardless.
If they could not pay after sometime, they had to sign contracts that made them stay and work as labor until they could pay off the debt which gave the white landowners free labor for doing nothing.