Gradually the terms of enslavement became more rigid and slavery became a racial caste.

Then following 1662, the colony hardened slavery into a racial caste by partus law.

In the wake "of a system of racial caste only recently ended," large disparities endure.

This idea about "fixed nature" was Jefferson's rationalized justification for the racial caste of slavery.

All these groups lived and worked together; boundaries were more fluid than after slavery became institutionalized as a racial caste.

There no longer were "colored" and "white" signs to degrade them, but the specter of racial caste was omnipresent.

Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong racial caste.

It followed Virginia in increasing its controls on slavery, which became a racial caste of the foreign Africans.

The association of slavery with a "race" led to slavery as a racial caste.

Such relationships indicated the fluid nature of society before slavery became defined as a lifelong racial caste.