African Indentured Servants During Jamestown

For a long time, Jamestown, VA took in many indentured servants—a worker who is under contract of an employer for up to seven years in exchange for transportation and many necessities (clothing, food, drink, and lodging)—in order to fulfill the duties that the owners couldn’t. Though employers made Jamestown seem like a loving and welcoming place, it was just the opposite. These indentured servants were treated equally to slaves, but many were willing to risk their lives in order to gain their own land. Once they obtained land of their own, they could grow their own tobacco and become extremely wealthy.

"It declared that slaves needed written authorization to leave their plantation, that slaves found accountable of murder or rape would be hanged, that for robbing or any other major offence, the slave would receive sixty lashes and be placed in stocks, where his or her ears would be cut off, and that for minor offences, such as associating with whites, slaves would be whipped, branded, or maimed."(Henning 1) Black slaves were forbidden from carrying firearms by a 1639 Virginia law, which prearranged 20 lashes for violations of the law. "There was one exception: with his master’s permission, a slave could bear firearms to defend against Indian raids."(Goldenburg 2) For the 17th century slave in Virginia, disagreements with a master could be result before a court for judgment. A slave owner who wanted to stop the most defiant of slaves could now do so, aware any punishment he or she imposed, could include death and would not outcome in even the smallest amount slap on the wrist.

From the 17th to the 19th century, Europeans expedited African people to perform exhausting labor, thus restricting their freedom. In a People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn described the development of slavery by stating the contributing factors. For instance, European settlers coming from Europe and Spain would station at Africa to force Africans to return to America and work on plantations. African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. In addition, to being plantation workers, slaves could also work in the houses of their owners as butlers, cooks, and nurses for children. Furthermore, slaves were taken away from their

Throughout the book, The Origins of Slavery, the author, Betty Woods, depicts how religion and race along with social, economic, and political factors were the key factors in determining the exact timing that the colonist’s labor bases of indentured Europeans would change to involuntary West African servitude. These religion and racial differences along with the economic demand for more labor played the key roles in the formation of slavery in the English colonies. When the Europeans first arrived to the Americas in the late sixteenth century, at the colony of Roanoke, the thought of chattel slavery had neither a clear law nor economic practice with the English. However by the end of that following century, the demand for slaves in the

The first African Americans that were put to work in Jamestown were not treated in the way that people traditionally think of early slavery. In fact they were treated just as the indentured servants that had come from England were treated. This does not mean that they were treated with any sympathy or given easy work, but that they just were not discriminated by the color of their skin. In the beginning of the 1600s all servants had the same dream, to one day be free. In 1641, a black slave by the name of Anthony Johnson, was freed and given his own land to start his new life as an American (Johnson et al, Africans, 39). At this point in time the only things that separated people were if you were an owner or a servant and if you were a Christian or not. At some point in the mid 1700s something changed the way that the colonists saw things. All of a sudden there was no longer equal treatment of white and black slaves, the darker the color of ones skin was the worse off their life became. In 1640, three slaves tried escaping to Maryland but were unsuccessful, when they were brought upon the court two of the

Luckily, for those in power, there was a precedent for unpaid labor in the form of indentured servitude. The workforce made up of those working off their travel, food, and room and board had already proved useful and cost-effective in this new market. As fully owned slaves began to arrive there grew a need to fully define the differences under the law. Virginia enacted the earliest of such laws which began to define the status of those of African descent within the colonies. According to one of the laws: ”…any negroe, molatto,

Black Codes were enacted in 1865 and 1866 by new southern state governments. Similar to the Slave Codes that existed before the Civil War, these Black Codes sought to regulate past slaves lives such as prohibiting freed slaves to serve on juries or to testify against a white person in court. Although the Black Codes granted African Americans to possess and sell property and legalized black marriages, interracial marriage between white and black Americans was outlawed. Unfortunately, some states even went further to control the lives of African Americans by limiting their economic freedoms such as, preventing any African Americans from purchasing or renting farmland in the state of Mississippi. As a result of decreeing the Black Codes, a division

The first American slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Their job was to aid in the production of crops such as tobacco as the Virginians “were desperate for labor, to grow enough to stay alive… needed labor, to grow corn for subsistence, to grow tobacco for export” (Zinn 24,25). The slaves that were being brought to the Americas were seen as builders of the economic foundations of the new nation and as time passed the ownership of slaves dwindled but inequality and segregation grew to be more prevalent in the U.S (“Slavery in America”). On January 1st, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order which freed slaves in the United States not within the Confederacy, under Union Control. Two years later the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery but many Southern States managed to create unattainable prerequisites for blacks to live, work or participate in society. With nearly one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African-Americans were still treated just as unequally. Oppression, race-inspired violence, segregation and an unequal world of disenfranchisement lingered across Southern States for African-Americans. The Jim Crow Laws

In 1619, the first enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia. Their sole purpose was to work the fields picking and farming profitable crops such as cotton and tobacco. It is estimated that between 1700 and 1800 six to seven billion enslaved Africans were brought to the American shore (Slavery). Life as an enslaved African was more than tough, it was appalling. Slaves were prohibited from becoming literate, they were restricted in every aspect, whether it was in movement or behavior, and they were punished severely. Slave masters “took sexual liberties” with enslaved women, which was thought to be a tactic to procreate slaves (Slavery). According to that interpretation, slave masters were fueled to

Indentured servants were used in early colonial times as a means of passage to the new world. The cash crops of the early settlers were exhaustingly labor intensive. In fact, U.S. History (2015) indicated that “the growth of tobacco, rice, and indigo and the plantation economy created a tremendous need for labor in Southern English America” (p. 1). The technology did not exist at the time for machinery that clears the ground and works the land as it does today. The work had to be done by hand; from clearing and prepping the fields to harvesting the crops, it was all manual labor for which the new land did not have ample supply of.

They were made to use separate facilities such as restrooms, restaurants, and waiting rooms. Blacks were prevented from renting land outside of the towns. They were forbidden to go anywhere they wanted. They were prevented from marrying any one outside of their race.

In 1607, the colony of Jamestown, Virginia was founded and was severely unstable due to the lack of knowledge of survival in the new world. By the time the colony of Jamestown, Virginia became stabilized, they were solely dependent on slave labor in order to farm their sole cash crop, tobacco. Since Native Americans were of no use as slave laborers due to their decreased population size and lack of immunization to European diseases, indentured servants were used for labor instead. This continued until 1619, when the first documented slaves from Africa arrived in Jamestown by the assistance of a European trade company. African slaves soon became their main work force because of their affordability and immunization to diseases.

During this time period, African Americans could not marry white folk, carry weapons, travel places without permits, and had difficulty finding jobs due to segregation (even if they got jobs, the pay was not equal compared to whites (also there was no chance for them getting higher class jobs, only lower class)). The African American children could not even go to the same school as Caucasians. These were the black codes. The 14th amendment ended the black codes, but later on Jim Crow Laws appeared which were similar to black codes. Jim Crow Laws happened later on in the 19th century.

The origin of indentured servant’s dates to medieval serfdom. Serfdom, a condition in medieval Europe in which a tenant farmer was bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of his landlord (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2016). An authoritative order was put in place in June of 1349 requiring residents under sixty to meet the demands of labor requests. Indentured servants signed a one-year covenant that was renegotiated annually. With servitude allowing citizens to become a farm worker or to train learning a trade, many English men and women willingly obliged the indentures. Though servants were free and not slaves, the indentures subsequently allowed them to temporarily become property that could be bought and sold.

Labor in colonial America was scarce. Explain the development of using indentured servants for labor in the colonies. Below are some of the items you may include: