During the 17th and 18th century enslaved African Americans in the Upper South mostly raised tobacco. In coastal South Carolina and Georgia, they harvested indigo for dye and grew rice, using agricultural expertise brought with them from Africa. By the 1800s rice, sugar, and cotton became the South's leading cash crops. The patenting of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 made it possible for workers to gin - separate the seeds from the fiber - some 600 to 700 pounds daily, or ten times more cotton than permitted by hand. The Industrial Revolution, centered in Great Britain, quadrupled the demand for cotton, which soon became America's leading export. Planters' acute need for more cotton workers helped expand southern slavery. By the Civil War the South exported more than a million tons of cotton annually to textile manufactories in Great Britain and the North. Short-staple, or upland cotton, dominated the market. An area still called the Black Belt, which stretched across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, grew some 80 percent of the nation's crop. Simultaneously cotton expanded into the new states of Arkansas and Texas. In parts of the Black Belt enslaved African Americans made up more than three-fourths of the total population.

Most African Americans resisted enslavement. They used techniques such as work slowdowns, sabotage, sickness, self-mutilation, or the destruction of property. Whenever possible, individuals attempted to liberate themselves by running away. Some runaways - called maroons - created free communities, such as those that existed in Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp or in the Florida Everglades among the Seminole Indians. Beginning in the 17th century, African Americans repeatedly banded together in attempts to overthrow the institution of slavery. Large-scale uprisings include Gabriel's Rebellion, which occurred near Richmond Virginia in 1800. The revolt's leader, Gabriel Prosser, reportedly drew inspiration from the Haitian Revolution. The best-known rebellion occurred in 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia. Led by enslaved preacher Nat Turner, some 70 followers destroyed property and murdered more than 50 white men, women and children within a 24-hour period. Following Turner's rebellion many Virginia slaveholders reported insubordinate behavior by their slaves. In retaliation vigilantes murdered innocent blacks. The uprising succeeded in terrorizing white southerners, and as a direct result, southern lawmakers enacted stricter regulations designed to tightly control the activities of enslaved and free African Americans.

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