In Run Away Home, What Did Papa Call Sharecropping?
Discussion Questions
What is sharecropping?
Answer: Sharecropping is when the worker gets a share of the crop for working the land. The plantation owner or landlord often got the biggest portion of the crop. Also, the sharecroppers often had to buy seeds and other necessities at the plantation store on credit, so they were in debt much of the time.
In Run Away Home, what did Papa call sharecropping?
Answer: Papa said, “Sharecropping aine nothing but slavery with a new name.”
What happened when many black families couldn’t survive by sharecropping?
Answer: They moved up North to work in factories or out West.
What did Papa mean when he said, “Tote the load of another person ‘fore you pass judgment.”
Possible Answers:
a.)Before you can know what it is really like for another person, you have to put yourself in their shoes.
b.)Before you can decide if someone is good or bad, you have to try to understand what life is like for that person and why they did something.
If you put yourself in an African American’s shoes back in the 1880s, what kinds of emotions might you experience if white people treated you wrongly and you could not get a job, or buy land, or get an education, orvote?
Possible answers: I would feel: angry, frightened, abused, hopeless, confused, etc.
Do you think that all white people were bad and hateful?
Possible answers:
a.)No, the army scout, Mr. Wratten, was a good person. He treated the African and Native Americans with kindness and respect.
b.)Yes, most of them seemed like they were mean and hateful.
c.)No, because there were white people who helped black people get to freedom with help from the Underground Railroad before the Civil War.
What kind of a group was The Knights of the Southern Order of Manhood?
Answer: It was a hate group just like the Ku Klux Klan.
What did these kinds of hate groups do to black families?
Answer: Sometimes they would burn their farms, tar and feather them, or sometimes they lynched black people.
Did Sarah Jane do the right thing by not telling someone about the run away Indian?
Possible answers:
a.)Yes, she did the right thing, otherwise Sky would have had to go back and live by the white man’s rules and maybe go to the CarlisleSchool for Indians in Pennsylvania.
b.)No, Sarah Jane did not do the right thing. She should have told her parents and let them decide what to do.
c.)Yes, Sarah Jane did do the right thing because the United States Army should not have forced the Indians to leave their land in the first place.
d.)No, Sarah Jane did not do the right thing because she lied to the Army scout. Besides, the Indian was frightened and he could have hurt her.
Sarah Jane’s mother was part white, part Seminole Indian, and part African American. Do you think that this helped her to “fit in” all three cultures or not?
Possible answers:
a.)Yes, because Sarah Jane even said that her Mama was “a bridge” between two worlds.
b.)No, because her skin was dark, she would not be accepted by any other culture.
In the story, Sarah Jane explains that someone had thrown a sack of puppies in the river to drown them because they did not want them or maybe they could not afford to keep them. What might happen if someone did that today?
Answer: They would likely get a huge fine and get in trouble with the law for cruelty to animals.