After the Civil War, what lifestyle did many poor whites and freed slaves adopt?

A) drugs and alcohol

B) they became cowboys

C) they enrolled in college

D) share cropping and tenant farming

The answer for this question is D.

The answer would be choice D.

Basically, after the Civil War, life for African Americans was a tornado of confusion. Just imagine, you have spent basically all your life working for 'your' Master in a plantation and that's the only life you know.

Now, after the Emancipation Proclamation is enacted and you become free, where would you go? Throughout your whole life you had been 'cared for' by your Master and the plantation was basically your home.

Well you might think of getting a job, but who is going to hire you? Majority of the people who can give you a job are plant owners! To add on, they aren't too happy that their slaves were freed (and some were a bit racist).

Moreover, the only alternative you have is sharecropping (which wasn't much better that slavery as plantation owners would take advantage of African Americans who were illiterate and naïve, but hey, that's what's left).

Finally, if you were a poor white men, life wasn't easy either for the reasons by which life is difficult for poor people and because hey, there was just a war and the country is under reconstruction. For these reasons, life for African Americans and poor white men after the Civil War became centered in sharecropping and tenant farming.