Many descendants of freed slaves continued to work as farmers and sharecroppers after emancipation, although thousands also moved into towns and to industrial cities of the North and Midwest in the African American of the first half of the twentieth century.
Many descendants of freed slaves continued to work as sharecroppers and laborers after emancipation. After the boll weevil and increased mechanization of agriculture, thousands of African Americans left Alabama to go to industrial cities of the North and Midwest in the Great Migration of the first half of the twentieth century.