The first hour covers the period from 1619 through 1739 and spotlights the origins of slavery in America, focusing on Dutch New Amsterdam (later New York City).

This installment shows how slavery in its early days was a loosely defined labor source similar to indentured servitude: Africans and others of mixed race and/or mixed culture had some legal rights, could take their masters to court and could even earn wages as they undertook the backbreaking labor involved in building a new nation - clearing land, constructing roads, unloading ships. But further south, the story of John Punch served as an omen of things to come. Captured after attempting to escape his tobacco plantation, he received a sentence far harsher than the two white men who ran with him. Indeed, in the Carolinas, where the enslaved were teaching struggling white planters how to grow the wildly lucrative crop "oryza" (rice), the labor system was already progressing towards the absolute control, dehumanizing oppression and sheer racism today most commonly associated with slavery. The first hour culminates with the bloody Stono rebellion in South Carolina, which led to the passage of "black codes," regulating virtually every aspect of slaves' lives.