Although blacks had "freedom" in a legal sense, most of them still did not have any educationor economic independence. Consequently, they were helpless to participate significantly in the political process to try to improve their status. Except for farm work, most former slaves had no skills. As a result, many blacks went back to work for the same white people who used tobe their masters. Not many blacks could buy their own land or accumulate enough money to become economically independent. Instead they worked on the whites' land and gave to or shared with the owner the crops or money earned from the crops. In the South, "sharecropping" had become a way of life for many blacks. By 1900, thirty-five years after the end of the Civil War,conditions in the South had changed little for black people.