Slavery & Resistance in Colonial America
How did America turn slavery into law — and how did the enslaved resist from the very start?
Why this month matters
Slavery in America did not arrive fully formed; it was built, law by law, by people who chose profit over conscience. This month shows a child two things at once: how a free society wrote unfreedom into its rules, and how — from the first day — enslaved people fought back in a thousand ways, from open revolt to the quiet, daily refusal to be erased.
The story
From servitude to slavery. In the early colonies, many laborers — Black and white — were indentured servants who could eventually go free. Over the 1600s, the colonies deliberately closed that door for Africans.
Slavery made into law. In 1662, Virginia passed partus sequitur ventrem — a child's status would follow the mother, making slavery hereditary and turning enslaved women's children into property at birth. After Bacon's Rebellion (1676), when poor white and Black laborers rose together, elites widened the racial divide on purpose. Virginia's slave codes of 1705 stripped away nearly every right. Slavery existed in all thirteen colonies, North and South.
African knowledge built the economy. Enslaved people from the Rice Coast brought rice-growing expertise that made South Carolina rich. Skilled Africans built much of colonial America's wealth — and were never paid for it.
Resistance from the beginning. The Stono Rebellion (1739) in South Carolina was one of the largest colonial revolts. Far more common was everyday resistance: working slowly, breaking tools, running away, and — crucially — keeping culture alive. The Gullah Geechee people of the coast preserved African language, foodways, crafts, and the ring shout. Communities of self-freed people, called maroons, survived in places like the Great Dismal Swamp.
Early voices. In 1773, Phillis Wheatley, kidnapped as a child, became the first African American to publish a book of poetry — proof, to a world that denied it, of Black genius.
This month’s stack
Showing picks for Explorers · Grades 3–5. Free options first, with where to buy or borrow.
Read together
Illustrated biographical picture book for grades 3-7 about Phillis Wheatley -- kidnapped from West Africa, enslaved in Boston, and in 1773 the first African American to publish a book of poems. Covers her education, her writing, and her 1778 emancipation. Pair with a reading of one of her short poems aloud. Emphasize her as a real person who created something permanent despite captivity.
Watch
A clearly written narrative from the Africans in America companion site explaining how Virginia's 1662 law (partus sequitur ventrem) made slavery hereditary and how this was different from earlier indentured servitude. Project and read aloud key paragraphs as a shared-reading 'screen time.' Stop to look at portrait images of Anthony Johnson. Grades 4-5 can read independently.
Do together
Children write a short letter (3-5 sentences) from Phillis Wheatley's point of view, addressed to someone in power, asking for something she cares about: her freedom, her education, the right to keep writing. Share letters aloud and discuss: what power does writing give someone? This connects to the 1773 publication that won Wheatley her freedom.
Talk about it
- Phillis Wheatley was never taught to read, but she taught herself. What does that tell you about her? What did her owners risk by letting her learn?
- The 1662 Virginia law said that a child born to an enslaved mother was also enslaved. Why do you think lawmakers made that rule? Who did it help, and who did it hurt?
- Enslaved people came from many different African nations and languages. How do you think they found ways to talk to each other and build new communities?
Fall down the rabbit hole
Visit it
The throughline
Slavery was a choice a society made and re-made, in writing. And from the first generation, the enslaved answered with a choice of their own: to resist, to remember, and to remain a people.