The English Colonies were set up as resource providers for the English Monarchy and economy in Europe. Products like cotton, tobacco, and other crops were planted and harvested in the rich soils of the colonies. The land and plantation owners were eager to cut costs, and with the African slave trade to places like the Caribbean and southern Spanish colonies booming, black slaves were an abundant and relatively cheap labor resource, especially for the farms and plantations in the southern colonies. Unlike the southern colonies, the northern colonies' economies began to differentiate themselves as producers of manufactured goods as well as services. In this way, even though slavery was legal in all of the English Colonies, the northern colonies had less of a demand for black slaves than the southern ones.

Operationally, slaves were brought in primarily from West African locales to work in agriculture-related servitude. Many of the slaves were separated from their families and many died during the long voyage via slave ship to the English Colonies. Once they arrived, they were brought to a slave market and usually auctioned off to the highest bidder just as cattle and horses were auctioned off. The slaves then spent their lives of servitude helping white farm and plantation owners in their agricultural operations. The slaves weren't typically compensated and lived in deplorable conditions. Slavery helped many white land owners become rich, and the southern colonies, which turned into the southern states, remained slave states, while those in the north became know as free states, where slavery was not legal. This dichotomy of cultures, between the northern and southern states, eventually led to further economic and cultural rifts leading up to the Civil War in 1860.

During the Civil War, the northern states allowed blacks to serve in the Union Army. Southern states, eager to fight for their way of life and economic interests, were against the abolition of slavery. This is not to say that the Civil War was fought on the question of whether black slavery should be legitimized, but slavery, as an economic mechanism, had much to do with the build up to war that had been occurring for nearly a century previous. After the Civil War, slavery was abolished. But though the institution of slavery was outlawed, the cultural and social norms were still left intact. Across the country, Jim Crow laws were left on the books that held blacks as second-class citizens with fewer rights than whites. Even after the reconstruction period, blacks had a hard time assimilating into mainstream American culture, and were economically and socially disadvantaged because of their history.