A plantation described a very large farm, primarily agricultural in nature, farmed by a large group of laborers. In the Old South, the plantations were managed by slaves owned by the family who ran the farm. Often, a plantation would specialize in one or two crops, such as sugar cane, tobacco, or cotton. More than half of all slaves worked on plantations before the Civil War, with these large farms primarily dependent on their labor. The wealth of white families was built on the backs of slave laborers. Through this wealth, the power of these families grew, ultimately creating an inescapable political and economic dynamic.

Africans were first transported to Virginia in 1619. They had been purchased as slaves in a culture where both races were able to be bought that way. Because they were also a minority in America, they possessed fewer rights and protections, and these factors slowly built the slave culture of the 18th and 19th centuries. Since Africans and African-Americans were often owned by white families, each new generation within the white culture was raised with a lesser and lesser view of African Americans. In the same timeline, African American children were born into slavery with parents who had been born into slavery, so the indentured circumstances of their lives became a more defined part of their reality.

As the plantation lifestyle took hold in the Old South, plantation owners used new means to control the slave population. They used abhorrent forms of corporal punishment, most particularly whipping, and treated them as non-human. The social system that was created over the decades as racism grew and white families became more certainly dependent on slave labor helped to limit the mobility of slaves who quite literally had nowhere to go and no way to live without their owners.

Slave codes, a series of formal and informal laws meant to limit the rights of slaves, were developed starting in the mid-1600s. The longer that white families pretended they were better than African Americans, the more legal and social precedent came into play to protect them.

Within African American communities, attempts were made to make the best out of their terrible living conditions. When a slave was injured on the job or through punishment, others within the community would tend to their wounds and help ensure their work got done to avoid further punishment. They would worship, eat, sing, and dance together. Songs that would be known as “negro spirituals” were written and passed down from generation to generation. Some of these songs told stories, while others were meant to help make the work day pass by more quickly.

Slaves faced severe punishment, even death, for failing to obey their owners, but by working together, they were able to watch out for each other and lessen the burdens of slavery through their community.