Overnight, the ratification of the 13th Amendment emancipated a class of uneducated Black laborers, skilled in agricultural work and lacking opportunities for land ownership. In response, many white landowners, to prevent economic losses from the abolition of their free labor source, implemented sharecropping (Riddle 1955, 55–56). In this system, a tenant farmer cultivated a certain amount of land belonging to the landowner in exchange for an agreed-upon dividend of the crops harvested. Economically disadvantaged freedmen would often engage in a credit system with the landowner to pay for supplies needed for both farming and life in exchange for a share of the crops produced. The credit system would then, in turn, cut the freedmen’s profit. This contributed to an unsustainable power imbalance between the white landowners and the freedmen, one that would lead Black Appalachians to seek opportunities through other means, and a disconnect between associating sharecropping and Black Appalachia occurred.

With African Americans gaining increased opportunities to buy land, more and more moved from sharecropping to other industries. No legal barriers stopped African Americans from buying property in Montgomery County, but the impoverished freedmen class often could not afford to raise enough money to purchase it (Thorp 2017, 85). As the Reconstruction era of the 19th century passed an increasing amount of  African Americans in Montgomery County began becoming landowners, many through a generational communal effort. Many African-American landowners received help buying land from friends and families, including white benefactors. (Thorp 2017, 85–91). With these trends in the Montgomery County region contributing to the development of a Black, landowning class, sharecropping began its descent into irrelevance in the area.

These blatant inequalities associated with sharecropping led to an interest in mining in the Montgomery County area. (Cooke 1992, 95–96). In the early 1900s, the goals of mining companies Big Vein and Great Valley of integration helped establish a guild of Black miners in the area. Both companies stated an incentive “to promote racial harmony” and hired equally paid white and Black miners (Cooke 1992, 97). The companies were able to create an “interdependency” among these workers fostered by integrated work in the mines (Cooke 1992, 97). Black Appalachians began labeling themselves as miners, in contrast to farmers, as a result of access to this occupation(Cooke 1992, 97). While mining is no longer isn’t the most popular job of choice for many Black Appalachians, it still stays relevant in its association with the region because it is popularly viewed as an industry that lacks prejudice towards Black Appalachians, a view unavailable to sharecropping.

In reference to Black Appalachia’s working trends, few people will mention sharecropping as a major industry, yet, its prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries helped lead the way to the dominance of coal mining and aided in setting up the racial climate that followed Appalachian society for years.

Renowned civil rights activist Booker T. Washington became the advisor of the school in 1896 (Thorp, 2017, 225) and used his influence to provide administrative staff and publicity for the school (Cooke, 1992, 98). First-hand accounts of his time as an advisor say Washington toured the greater Christiansburg area and called upon his Tuskegee Institute colleagues to fill vacant roles in the school, such as principal (Cooke, 1992, 98). Washington also gave an address in 1909 to Black and white residents of Christiansburg in support of the institution and his new ways of education (Thorpe, 2017, 225). 

A new agriculture and technical campus was built as the student body grew and the institute’s 185-acre farming campus eventually peaked at 15 buildings. In 1954, Christiansburg institute built Scattergood Hall, the first modern gymnasium in the region (Christiansburg Institute, 2023, 8). Scattergood Hall contained a theater, classrooms, and room for new activities such as football, cheerleading, and band (Davidson & Loumiet, 2012, 12) and ultimately symbolized the Christiansburg Institutes progress in providing quality education and opportunities  to African-American in the Southwest Virginia region . 

Today, the community of Wake Forest is still active in the preservation of the Kentland Plantation, which remains a priority to those who wish to encase the eras of history in which their ancestors were alive. Without the acknowledgment of the forced labor the enslaved of Kentland gave, the history of Kentland Plantation would be incomplete. To uphold Kentland and its history is to create space and remembrance of it’s predecessors.. In late 2005, the community collaborated with Virginia Tech to build a monument commemorating the enslaved people who died on the plantation. This monument was a huge step within the Kentland community because it stopped the further erasure of the enslaved people of Kentland. The monument physically marked the people who had lost their lives while enslaved at Kentland, and that distinction permanently solidified the deceased enslaved people in history books that previously would have glossed over them.