Indentured Servants and Enslaved People

Tell the difference between working for years to pay a trip and being forced to work for life.

Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.

What children learn in Level 53

Many workers in the colonies were not free. There were two very different kinds.
Indentured servants were usually poor people from England, Scotland, Ireland, or Germany. They signed a paper agreeing to work for about 4 to 7 years to pay for their trip. Then they were free, and sometimes got land or tools.
Enslaved people were Africans taken from their homes by force and carried across the ocean on crowded ships. They were forced to work their whole lives with no pay. Their children were enslaved too, and families could be sold apart.
The first Africans were brought to Virginia in 1619. Slavery was in all thirteen colonies, but most enslaved people lived in the South. Georgia banned slavery at first, then allowed it in 1751.
Enslaved people were people first. They kept their music, stories, and skills alive. Their knowledge of growing rice came from West Africa. Today the Gullah Geechee people on Georgia's coast keep that culture going.

Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:

SS3H3.c — Describe colonial life in America from the perspectives of various people: large landowners, farmers, artisans, women, children, indentured servants, slaves, and American Indians.