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Black and White

Slavery was slowly integrated and accepted in America, born from a supposedly simple and commonplace act of exchanging food for servants. This led to a gradual increase in the use of what was to become slave labor (14). The key change that moved the colonies away from a society with slaves and toward a slave society was the increase in British wages that led to an decrease in immigrant servants; from here, it was a continuing snowball effect that allowed slavery to be so heavily integrated into early American society.
In the early 17th century, it was common for Africans, along with whites and Native Americans, to be indentured servants. They would serve a master for a number of years, and then they would be free to own land and do as they pleased. For quite some time, this system worked well. There were enough laborers to work the land, and they would eventually be able to have land of their own. This was the usual practice for the next forty years or so, but then the situation began to change. British wages had increased due to the large numbers of people leaving for the colonies and lower birth rates. Because of this, servants were not inclined to leave, especially since they were not guaranteed land in New England. If they could live relatively comfortably in their own country, why journey across an ocean into uncertainty? Tobacco plantation owners were then put in an unfavorable position. Immigrant servants were willing to serve shorter and shorter periods of indenture, and therefore the land owners were having trouble keeping enough people to work the land. In response, they simply lengthened the periods of servitude for Africans (15). This simple compensation was the catalyst that began the creation of the black and white caste system in America.
At first, African workers were still referred to as “servants,” and laws that were essentially directed at them were worded in a way that was not...