... African Americans, working and free, worked in a wide variety of occupations from household workers, sailors, preachers and accountants to music teachers, medical assistants, blacksmiths, brick layers and carpenters, however, these men and women were doing virtually any work American society required, (Encarta.com). These Africans had many opportunities including owning land. Thirteen black workers took advantage of this right and bought land and were working side-by-side their white counterparts, (Kross, 280). However, when frontier conditions began to solidify along stricter class lines and land became too expensive to be purchased by these black workers. The rising of the price of land hurt the African land owners immensely: they had to now depend on their own achievements for political protection, whereas most white immigrants held the rights of Englishmen by birth. Thus, when access to property was greatly reduced and landholding became more limited, blacks lost their best hope for establishing enough political power in the settlements, (Piersen, 53). Now, these blacks had to return to indentured servitude. After years of relative freedom as indentured servants for the colonists, the Native American and white slaves had had gradually faded from the scene and forced labor was now more focused on race. The reason the whites were no longer forced laborers was due to lack of sufficient experience as agricultural laborers). Native Americans had quickly become targets when workers were needed. However, practical realities also made native laborers a shaky base upon which to build colonial prosperity: Indian servants could escape too easily into the surrounding wilderness, and many were fatally vulnerable to European diseases, (Piersen, 51). Soon enough, only blacks were working in the agricultural fields. Even Africans who had real jobs such as a brick layer, could not find anymore work due to the stereotype now being created that all blacks were working in the fields. With this stereotype now slowly being soldered into the minds of the colonists and the invention of race was now being formed throughout the New World and from this, would come racism which would remain there for over one and a half centuries. ...
