Slavery in North America

Let´s start with a definition of the slavery:

A slave is someone who is owned by another person.

A slave has:

No choice

No freedom                                                                  

No money

A slave has to do what is asked of him by his master, usually this is work of some kind. Slaves are punished for not following their master's orders, working too slowly, or attempting to runaway. When we think of slavery today we think of the black Africans who were captured, sold into slavery and taken to the Americas to work on the plantations there. 

Slavery, as an institution, has a very long history. Indeed slaves were used to build the pyramids by the ancient Egyptians, by the Romans and by the Ancient Britons. Slavery was abolished in Britain in 1807.  

     Now, let´s talk about Slavery in North America:

Africans sold as slaves in the Americas had to rely on their owners providing them with housing or building materials, pots and pans for cooking and eating, food and clothing. Many slaves did the best they could with what they were given. Most did not dare complain for fear of receiving a whipping or worse punishment. They had no money, so they couldn´t rent a normal house and they had to live in very small houses in inhuman conditions. Usually, slaves were allocated an area of the plantation for their living quarters. On some plantations the owners would provide the slaves with housing, on others the slaves had to build their own homes. Slaves that had to build their own houses tended to make them like the houses they had had in Africa and they all had thatched roofs. Living conditions were cramped with sometimes as many as ten people sharing a hut.

Indeed, they had little in the way of furniture and their beds usually made of straw or old rags. 

Slaves who worked in the plantation house generally had slightly better housing nearer to the house and were given better food and clothing than those slaves that worked in the fields. 

As slaves, they had to eat pots and pans, but more often they had to make their own. The long hours they had to work in the fields meant that they had little free time for making things to improve their living conditions. Some slaves used a hollowed out pumpkin shell called a calabash, to cook their food in. 

     We can resume all this facts in this interesting you tube video which I found appropriate, please enjoy it.