It seem that the media and schooling would lead a person to believe something altogether different about the Back History. For example the in 1860 the largest slave owner in in South Carolina was William Ellison. A black plantation owner. About 90% of black African slaves were acquired from black slave owners. Anthony Johnson, a black tobacco farmer , became America’s first legal slave owner on March 8 1655. http://dailykenn.blogspot.com/2012/05/2-how-many-americans-know-that-first.html
When I was 15, someone had to explain to me that I wasn't a slave, that slavery ended in 1865. Although, slavery still exists in the world today, even in this country. In my late teens, I spent much of my reading time on just this subject. I found out that the first slaves in this country were white. They used words like servants, bound, even wife. The first came from Europe with the people that decided to colonize this land. They knew they needed a labor force, but the Natives American people were not easily controlled. They would sentence petty criminals in Europe to years of servitude with American land owners. This kind of slavery went on a couple hundred years before the first African was offered up for sale. Africa had enslaved many of it's own people way before we ever wanted to use them to replace the whites that were freed as our laws changed. There has been slavery all over the world at one time or the other, and slavery is still alive and well today.
Years ago, I read a history that argued that the first slaves in what is now the United States were white. Indentured servants were people who paid for the cost of their transportation through an indenture, whereby they would agree to work for someone for a period of time, usually seven years. Those who ran out before their indenture was up were often sentenced to a lifetime of servitude to the person who held the indenture. A lifetime of servitude is slavery, and these people were white.
Yes @Ken Anderson , that is the word I couldn't think of. Indentured. When Europe started sending their criminals to Australia, the colonist needed more people to populate this country, so indentured servants were the answer, until Africans started to fill the labor needs.