Let the Circle be Unbroken Lesson Plan

Why does Moe seem both so irrational and so desperate about sharecropping?

You may want to ask this question in conjunction with the Sharecropping activity later today. Sharecropping, the students will understand, is an extremely difficult life: being in permanent and crippling debt to the people who own the land on which you live and depend for your livelihood gives you almost no freedom. Although psychologically it is different from being enslaved, the practical aspects of the life share a great deal with pre-Civil War life for black people in Mississippi. Moe also cares about his family and wants to be able to help them, and longs to see something more than their county....