Many freed slaves remained on their plantations and worked as sharecroppers. In this arrangement landowners (former plantation owners) also had no money to hire workers so what they would do is allow a freed slave to work the land and give a portion of the harvest to the landowner. The portion was usually quite high and it was difficult for the freeman to save enough to to sell on his own. In theory a sharecropper could save enough money to buy some mules and eventually rent the land but this was rare.
They had no education and could not read or write as a result of the Slave Codes.
Job opportunities were extremely limited.
Often the only skills a freed slave had was in farming and even then they usually only knew how to do the manual labor, not the actual running of a farm.
