Anthony Johnson
Slave Owner - 1654
"In 1650 there were only 300 negroes in Virginia, about
one percent of the population. They weren't slaves any more than the
approximately 4,000 white indentured servants working out their loans for
passage money to Virginia, and who were granted 50 acres each when freed from
their indentures, so they could raise their own tobacco.
Slavery was established in 1654 when Anthony Johnson, Northampton County,
convinced the court that he was entitled to the lifetime services of John Casor,
a negro. This was the first judicial approval of life servitude, except as
punishment for a crime. But who was Anthony Johnson, winner of this epoch-making
decision? Anthony Johnson was a negro himself, one of the original 20 brought to
Jamestown (1619) and 'sold' to the colonists. By 1623 he had earned his freedom
and by 1651, was prosperous enough to import five 'servants' of his own, for
which he received a grant of 250 acres as 'headrights.'
Anthony Johnson ought to be in a 'Book of Firsts.' As the most ambitious of the
first 20, he could have been the first negro to set foot on Virginia soil. He
was Virginia's first free negro and first to establish a negro community, first
negro landowner, first negro slave owner and as the first, white or black, to
secure slave status for a servant, he was actually the founder of slavery in
Virginia. A remarkable man."
Reference: English-speaking America: Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers' Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378