How did the enslaved Africans react to their plight in the New World?

Of course, various individual slaves reacted in different
ways to their circumstances.  This is simply human nature.  However, the answer you are
probably supposed to give is that the slaves resisted slavery and attempted to build
their own communities (to help themselves cope) in a variety of ways.  This is the
current consensus among historians.

For example, the most
common thing to say about slaves and resistance is that slaves resisted their masters in
little ways every day.  They worked slowly.  They broke tools.  They simply tried as
hard as they could to be unhelpful.  This was their only real way to resist because they
could not rise up and most could not run away.

Historians
also say that slaves worked on helping themselves cope.  They say that slaves started
calling each other "brother" and "sister" (something called "fictive kinship") as a way
to feel solidarity.  By feeling that they were kin to all the other slaves, they were
more able to cope with the psychological stresses of slavery.