they became slaves people without freedom who had to work for no money and do what they were told. They had to work very hard on the coffee, tobacco,cotton, and sugar plantations, which were very large farms. Some worked in white people is houses, where they cooked, cleaned, and took care of children. More than ten million Africans were shipped to America over three hundred years. Families could not stay together, and so husbands lost wives and parents lost children. The slaves did not go to school, so most of them could not read or write. Their lives were very hard. Some slaves were owned by people who were kind, but many were not.