Virginia was warm and green like England. Many English people who came to live there were richer than the Puritans. They had large farms called plantations, and lived in big houses with white porches. Velvet lawns shaded by trees sloped to rippling rivers. Tobacco could be grown there, and that was worth much money in London. Slaves were bought to work in the tobacco fields.
The negro slaves lived near the master's house, in a village of log cabins. Calico dresses were given to the women and trousers to the men. The children had loose, short-sleeved shirts of tow linen. They slept in beds now, and sat on chairs and ate from tables. Everything was strange to them, even the way the white people talked. A boy or girl who learned quickly was taken from the field into the house. A little black boy might be called Sambo, a little girl Topsy. The negroes were not proud and brave like the Indians, nor were they cruel. They were never envious and hateful. The black "mammy" loved the little white baby she nursed. Sambo liked to catch the horses and ride with Master Roger. And Topsy liked to iron pretty dresses, to make frosted cake, and to powder and puff Mistress Evelyn's hair, lace her rosy-flowered gown and buckle her satin slippers when she went to a ball.
Many slaves were sold farther south than Virginia. They toiled in rice and cotton fields, cut sugar cane and picked coffee berries. You remember how the black children were always laughing and talking in the village of palm huts? Even after they became slaves in America they were happy, if they were warm and well-fed, and had kind masters who did not make them work too hard. On the plantations, in the evening, they talked and danced, and played oil drums and bone rattles and banjos. Negroes have as sweet voices for singing as any people in the world. Sometimes the master's family, sitting in the moonlight, stopped talking to listen to the negroes singing. Perhaps your mother or big sister knows some of these negro songs. Today we love to sing "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Black Joe," "Way Down Upon the Suwanee River," and many other pretty negro songs.
The negroes were slaves in America for two hundred years. Then they were all set free. None of them want to go back to Africa, to the old wild life. They want to stay here and live like white people and send their children to school. They are Americans, too. They call themselves Afro-Americans.
