The first labor in the new colonies was indentured servitude.  English and Irish poor sold their labor for four to seven years to a farmer who would fund their voyage across the Atlantic. (Schultz, Kevin. Hist3, Volume 1:  U.S. History Through 1877 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Page 34.)

http://ncpedia.org/indentured-servants

Contract:

http://pixgood.com/indentured-servants.html

The Virginia Company offered a head right of 50 acres to individuals who paid their own passage, to encourage more importation.  Throughout the 1600s, almost 80 percent of immigrants to Virginia were indentured servants, most of whom were young lower-class males. (Schultz, Kevin.  HIST 3, Volume 1: U.S. History Through 1877. Wadworth, Cengage Learning 2014.  Pages 34-35.

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http://pixgood.com/indentured-servants.html

By the 1680s black slavery became the dominant labor system on southern plantations, when British the economy improved and indentured servants died within five years of their arrival. (www.digitalhistory.uh.org)

"Slaves working in 17th-century Virginia  

  http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/8850

In the 17th and 18th centuries, slaves worked mainly on plantations on the southern coast.  They developed their own culture apart from their masters, such as their music and traditions.

http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/images/OldPlantLg.jpg

Slaves were mostly confined to one home, not always with family members.  Most family got separated when their masters sold them on the slave block.

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

Slaves were dependent on their owners, restrictive codes governed their lives.  They were not allowed to learn how to read or write.  White owners took advantage of female slaves, because all children born to slaves were also were property of their masters.

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

Slave codes were passed in many Southern states, which included they could not leave the premised without their owners permission or own a gun.  Some slaves received lynchings by plantation overseers.

 http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/thumbnail193.html

The invention of the cotton gin made work easier on field hands, but the demand for cotton grew for Southern to export to Europe.  More slaves were needed and the price for slaves doubled.

http://www.glogster.com/cmota/poster-glog-by-cmota-eli-whitney/g-6lh4cnbuk9ijnijgesn7sa0

The abolition movement grew from the 1830s to the 1860s to abolish slavery led by free slaves such as Frederick Douglas.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Toms' Cabin help influence more abolitionists to help slaves escape.

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

Free blacks and antislavery northerners helped slaves escape from the south through a network of safe houses called the Underground Railroad.

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

Westward expansion divided the country over whether a new state or territory should be a free or allow slavery.  Also, the Supreme Court ruled that slave Dred Scott was never free, even though his master had taken him into free territory.  Abolitionist John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, Virginia divided the country even further, which led to the Civil Warn (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery).

Dred Scott (www.pbs.org)

John Brown's raid

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.  After the Civil War the 13th Amendment was ratified to free the slaves.  The 14th Amendment gave them citizenship and the 15th Amendment gave them the right to vote.  In the south, most of these amendments were ignored and blacks were not treated fairly.  Blacks did not fight for their rights again until the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s .

(http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery).

Reconstruction after the Civil War