One of America's first legally sanctioned slave owners.
Anthony Johnson (b. c. 1600 – d. 1670) was a black Angolan who achieved freedom in the early 17th-century Colony of Virginia after serving his term of indenture. He became a property owner, and was one of the first people in Virginia to have his right to own a slave legally recognized. After being held as an indentured servant in 1621, he earned his freedom after several years, and was granted land by the colony. He later became a successful tobacco farmer in Maryland. He attained great wealth after having been an indentured servant and has been referred to as “'the black patriarch' of the first community of Negro property owners in America".
Arab slave master whipping African man
Johnson was captured in his native Angola by an enemy tribe and sold to Arab slave traders. He was eventually sold as an indentured servant to a merchant working for the Virginia Company, with his given name Antonio. After years of being in indentured servitude, in 1635 Antonio and his wife gained freedom from indenture and he changed his name to Anthony Johnson. Johnson first enters the legal record as a free man when he purchased the calf in 1647. Johnson acquired 250 acres of land under the headright system by buying the contracts of 5 indentured servants.
In 1653, John Casor, a black indentured servant whose contract Johnson appeared to have bought in the early 1640s, approached Captain Goldsmith, claiming his indenture had expired seven years earlier and that he was being held illegally by Johnson. A neighbor, Robert Parker, intervened and persuaded Johnson to free Casor.
Parker offered Casor work, and he signed a term of indenture to the planter. Johnson sued Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654 for the return of Casor. The court initially found in favor of Parker, but Johnson appealed. In 1655, the court reversed its ruling. Finding that Anthony Johnson still "owned" John Casor, the court ordered that he be returned with the court dues paid by Robert Parker.
This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.
Though Casor was the first person declared a slave in a civil case, there were both black and white indentured servants sentenced to lifetime servitude before him. Many historians describe indentured servant John Punch as the first documented slave in America, as he was sentenced to life in servitude as punishment for escaping in 1640.
Lessons
This is can be seen as an example of the one of the polar aspects of human beings; when we are hurt, we often hurt others. It may be hard to see how a person could force another to endure the same atrocity they've been through, but think of sexual assault victims, some boys who undergo sexual assault will turn into predators themselves and not because they don't know the pain of it. This is also an example of why slavery was never in the hands of one group of people, slavery is and has been a worldwide epidemic and is not subject to one race or group of people. Anyone can be a victim or perpetrator of slavery.