Check out the movie, Django Unchained. Samuel L. Jackson plays the Head House Slave. This was a real-to-life character based on history, not a movie fabrication.

Django Unchained': Samuel L. Jackson on playing a 'hateful negro'

He essentially takes care of the house and all the property for slave owner Calvin Candie (played by Leonardo De Caprio in an outstanding performance). Stephen is the guy who makes that plantation run. He writes the checks. Within those 75 miles that are Candieland, he understands he's king. He can do anything he wants to there. Even the white people obey him. But if he steps foot outside that 75 miles, he's just another slave in the South. He's smart enough to know he needs to keep up his own kingdom. The institution of slavery works for him. His father did that job, his grandfather did that job. And he inherits the job of taking care of the Candie family. He's never been in the field, never been touched. Nobody has ever laid a hand on him.

The slave women in the house have a better life than the people working out in the field. Women who cook are the granddaughters or daughters of women who have been cooking there all their lives. The girls who serve the tables were taught the serving ceremony by their mothers or grandmothers. The only itinerant or transient people on that plantation are the people in the field. They come and go. They get whipped, they get beaten, and they die. And the Mandingos, who fight and die. But the life inside that house is an ongoing thing that always was and always will be...

Worth reading the rest of the article of Jackson's interview, and watching the movie.