Life for African Slaves in Early America

One of the groups of people that made up a large chunk of the population in British Colonial America were African slaves.  Life in colonial America was obviously pretty difficult for the slaves, and they faced many rough conditions and trials just to get to America in the first place.  Once they arrived, things did not get much better.

The African Slave Trade was an extremely brutal thing for many Africans.  Europeans set up ports at different places in Africa, and European sailors would bring goods to these ports in exchange for humans (PBS).  The sailors would then sell the humans to American slave owners so they could provide labor on their fields and farms (PBS).  The conditions for the Africans on the ships were absolutely terrible.  There was limited space, and diseases spread quickly (PBS).  A classmate said during the discussion, "The people were treated like animals." Sadly,  I think that is a fair way of describing it.  Many of the Africans died before they reached America on these ships (PBS). 

For the Africans who reached America on the boats, there was not exactly a great sigh of relief.  Cash crops had become a huge industry in the colonies, and with the newly arrived Africans as slaves, the plantation owners realized they could get a lot of labor for basically no cost (PBS).  Many of the Africans knew how to cultivate the crops so they were used to help make the owners rich (PBS).

The conditions on the plantations were usually very inhumane.  The slaves often had to work very long hours and they often were treated with violence, such as being hit or whipped if they were not keeping up with the required "pace" of work (PBS).  This was even the case on Thomas Jefferson's, one of America's presidents, plantations.   I was somewhat surprised when I heard that Thomas Jefferson had slaves.  Jefferson inherited slaves from his parents and owned a plantation called Monticello in Virginia (Jefferson and Slavery...).  Jefferson however did not want his slaves to be treated brutally, but whenever he was gone from the plantation, his workers often went against his wishes (Jefferson and Slavery...).  The African slaves often had to live in fear because they never knew what was going to be facing them in the upcoming days.  As the relations between the white colonists and black Africans grew more tense, the colonists grew stronger in their oppression against the African slaves (PBS).  There were times when some Africans would try to rebel, but they were often unsuccessful.  The cruelty of the slaves had almost just become normal (PBS).   Some of the colonies legalized killing and torturing slaves (PBS). 


The lives of Africans slaves in early America were extremely difficult.  They were shipped over to the new land in harsh conditions, and stepped onto land in conditions that were almost just as bad in some places.  The slaves were beaten, lived in fear, and often did not get sufficient food and water.  The relations between the white colonists and the slaves grew more and more bitter, and set off a racism trend that would continue for many years.











"Jefferson and Slavery at Monticello: Paradox of Liberty- Thomas Jefferson's Monticello." Thomas
        Jeffersons Monticello Blog RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2013.

PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2013.