What was colonial Jamestown like?

A black American writer, J. Saunders Redding, describes the arrival of a ship in North America in the year 1619:

Sails furled, flag drooping at her rounded stern, she rode the tide in from the sea. She was a strange ship, indeed, by all accounts, a frightening ship, a ship of mystery. Whether she was trader, privateer, or man-of-war no one knows. Through her bulwarks black-mouthed cannon yawned. The flag she flew was Dutch; her crew a motley. Her port of call, an English settlement, Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia. She came, she traded, and shortly afterwards was gone. Probably no ship in modern history has carried a more portentous freight. Her cargo? Twenty slaves.

We cannot contemplate colonization without thinking about the formation of American slavery.

Read chapters 2 and 3 (“Drawing the Color Line” and “Persons of Mean and Vile Condition) and look at this timeline on American slave law (Slave Law in Colonial Virginia).
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncolorline.html
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnvil3.html
Once you have finished reading or listening. Consider the following questions:

1) What was colonial Jamestown like?

2) Why was seventeenth century Virginia the ideal breeding ground for racism and slavery?

3) How does Zinn characterize Africa at this time?

4) Did slaves rebel? How?

5) How does Zinn characterize Bacon and the course of Bacon’s rebellion?

6) How was the experience of indentured servitude similar to slavery?

7) What does Zinn say about the colonial class system?

8) Why was the union of Indians and slaves a less frightening prospect?

9) How did the poor rebel? And how did the elites respond?

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