Actually, the first African slaves in (then British North America arrived in 1619 in Hampton, Virginia on a Dutch vessel that had purchased them in the Caribbean and sold them to Virginian planters under the same laws governing white indentured servants. (Including freedom and a land grant after 7 years of servitude). But slaves had already been kidnapped, transported, and sold throughout the European colonies of that Caribbean and Latin America.
It was only in 1665 with the passage of the Slave Codes in Virginia that a clear legal distinction was established between African slaves and European indentured servants: from then on white people had legal rights as citizens; black people had none, and were classified as chattel property.

This is when the horrific institution of racially coded, intergenerational slavery actually started in the US. Prior to that, slavery was commonplace throughout the world—including Africa. It was largely a more humane and profitable way of dealing with POWs from endless tribal wars than simply massacring them! But unlike racial slavery, these earlier slaves—in Rome and elsewhere, could earn or buy their freedom—often by military service to the local warlord. The peculiar evil of racially coded slavery in the US was that it was intergenerational and gave rise to a toxic, self-serving racist ideology of “white supremacy