Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
To understand the origin of Black slavery in the British American colonies, we must confront a troubling and complex truth. This system of exploitation was not inevitable. It was not preordained by the character of the people enslaved, nor was it rooted in any inherent logic of labor or law. Instead, it arose from volitional choices shaped by circumstances, profit motives, and the widespread corruption of colonial America’s government—a system that would profoundly mark the course of human history.
When the earliest settlers of colonial Virginia began their search for a labor force, they turned not to Africans but to white servants from England, Scotland, and Ireland. These indentured servants, bound for a time rather than a lifetime, were initially preferred for the labor-intensive tobacco fields. Nothing about tobacco cultivation demanded Black bodies, nor did any peculiar trade of Africans predetermine their enslavement. British common law also provided no basis for what was to come, as the settlers carried with them no legal concept of “slave” as we understand it today. They inherited a tradition rooted in the absence of such categories.
Yet within two generations, a profound transformation occurred. By the late 17th century, Black slavery in America had been codified with completeness and cruelty unmatched by any system the world had seen before. Slavery, as an institution, is as old as humanity itself, with civilizations from Egypt to China, Greece to Rome, and even indigenous African societies practicing it in various forms. However, the form slavery took in North America was unique. Here, the status of “slave” became permanent and heritable. It was inscribed into law and enforced with the brutality of racial ideology.
How did this particular system emerge? The answer lies not in the inevitability of history but in deliberate design. As indentured servitude waned—due in part to declining European migration and increasing life expectancies—planters sought a labor source they could control completely. Africans, uprooted from their homelands and stripped of social ties, were seen as ideal candidates for this control. Racism, which had long simmered in the background, was weaponized to justify their enslavement. Blackness itself was criminalized, and whiteness exalted. This was not accidental; it was a system built brick by brick.
The law redefined people of African descent as property, and religious and cultural narratives were manipulated to strip away their humanity. The Atlantic slave trade expanded to fuel this growing demand, transforming lives and societies across continents. What makes American slavery so harrowing is the precision with which it was constructed. Within two generations, it achieved systemic completeness, ensuring economic dominance for a select few and generational suffering for countless millions. It was an institution designed to perpetuate itself, a machine of oppression that seared racial divisions into the fabric of American life.
The origins of Black slavery in the British colonies were neither natural nor inevitable. They were the result of human decisions, driven by greed and cemented by the purposeful dehumanization of an entire people. To understand this history, we must reckon with its intentionality. We must acknowledge that this system was not the product of misunderstanding or passive inheritance but of calculated action. Only by facing this truth can we begin to undo its lasting shadows and work toward a future that values the dignity and humanity of all.
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