The impact of sharecropping became evident during the Great Depression. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, in 1930, 1,831,470 farmers in the South were sharecroppers. By 1935, nearly half of all white farmers and over three-quarters of all black farmers were sharecroppers.
When the Depression was in full force, many farms collapsed due to falling prices and lack of income. This forced sharecroppers to migrate west looking for new opportunities.
Most went towards California; these people were labeled “Okies" because a great number of them were leaving Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl era when land became unusable. This was due to Oklahoma having the highest number of tenant farmers in the country says the Oklahoma Historical Society. In California, the sharecropper picked peas, potatoes, and fruit.
Sharecropping also saw the overproduction of cotton in states such as Mississippi. The Mississippi Historical Society states that cotton prices started a long decline from the 1860s through the Great Depression. By 1900 figures, 36 percent of white farmers and 85 percent of black farmers in the state did not own their own land. When there was no longer a profit for the landlord in manual labor, the sharecroppers were evicted as in Oklahoma. The impact of sharecropping was found in the number of displaced, homeless, migrant families with little or no subsistence.