The most obvious fallacy of "the legacy of slavery" myth is that slavery was a white-versus-black institution. As will be demonstrated in chapter 4, the complexion of slave ownership was never totally white. Throughout the history of American slavery, thousands of African-Americans were slaveholders. Furthermore, several histori-ans have reported that the institution of slavery itself has its origins in a lawsuit filed by an early African-American slaveholder. [87] According to this account, Anthony Johnson, one of the original Africans landed in Virginia in 1619, was sold as an indentured servant. Alter completing his indentureship, Johnson became a rather successful farmer and bought several indentured servants for his own use. Upon a demand by one of his servants, the servant, named John Castor, was freed from his indentureship. When Castor bound himself to another man, a Mr. Parker, Johnson filed suit against Parker (Johnson v. Parker, Northampton County, Virginia). The suit resulted in Castor being returned to Johnson as his servant for life. From this landmark decision in 1653, slavery in the South sprang. It should be noted that the main characters in this event were all Africans. Even if it can be proven that the father of Southern slavery was an African-American, supporters of victimization will still try to fix the guilt of slavery on white racists. When faced with the fact that Africans in Africa sold their fellow citizens to Europeans or with the fact of African-American involvement in the institution of slavery in America, this crowd never allows these tacts to get in the way of their crusade. As with the communist purveyors, anyone who wishes to discuss facts will be charged with aiding and abetting the so-called criminal activity.[87] Francis W. Springer, War for What (Bill Coats Ltd., Nashville, TN: 1990), p. 9
SOURCE: Myths of American Slavery, Walter D. Kennedy; Foreward by Bob Harrison; Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, Louisiana, 2003, p. 62.
Walter D. Kennedy
Bob Harrison
In a limited but nonetheless significant sense, then, the Jamestown experience was an open experience which provided unusual opportunities for individual blacks. This comes out most clearly in the life and times of Anthony Johnson, who came to America in 1621 or thereabouts from England. Like many other blacks of the period, Johnson quickly worked out his term of indenture and started accumulating property. In 1651, according to official records, he imported and paid for five servants, some of whom were white, and was granted 250 acres of land on the basis of the headright system, which permitted planters to claim fifty acres of land for each individual brought to the colony.The abstract of the deed reads as follows:
ANTHONY JOHNSON, 250 acs. Northampton Co., 24 July 1651, .... At great Naswattock Cr., being a neck of land bounded on the S.W. by the maine Cr. & on S.E. & N.W. by two small branches issueing out of the mayne Cr. Trans, of 5 pers: Tho. Bemrose, Peter Bughby, Antho. Cripps, Jno, Gesorroro, Richard Johnson.In the years that followed, Johnson and his relatives established one of America's first black communities on the banks of the Pungoteague River. In 1652 John Johnson, who was probably Anthony Johnson's son, imported eleven persons, most of them white males and females, and received headrights for 550 acres adjacent to Anthony Johnson. Two years later Richard Johnson imported two white indentured servants and received one hundred acres.
Here are the records of the deeds:
JOHN JOHNSON, 550 acs. Northampton Co., 10 May 1652 ... At great Naswattocks Cr., adj. 200 acs. granted to Anthony Johnson. Trans, of 11 pers: John Edward, Wm. Routh, Tho. Yowell, Fra. Maland, William Price, John Owen, Dorothy Rily, Richard Hemstead, Law. Barnes, Row. Rith, Mary Johnson.RICH. Jnoson (Johnson-also given as John), Negro, 100 acs. Northampton Co., 21 Nov. 1654, ... On S. Side of Pongoteague Riv., Ely. upon Pocomock Nly. upon land of John Jnoson., Negro, Wly. upon Anto. Jnoson., Negro, & Sly. upon Nich. Waddilow. Trans, of 2 pers: Wm. Ames, Wm. Vincent.
The Johnson settlement at its height included only a handful of blacks with large holdings. Other blacks lived in integrated communities in other areas of the colony. In 1656, for instance, Benjamin Doyle received a patent for three hundred acres in Surry County. In 1668 John Harris bought fifty acres in New Kent County; and Phillip Morgan, reflecting the optimism of the age, leased two hundred acres in York County for ninety-nine years.
One can hardly doubt, in the face of this clear evidence, that the first generation of blacks had, as J. H. Russell noted, "about the same industrial or economic opportunities as the free white servant." Additional evidence of the relatively high status of the first American blacks is to be found in colonial documents which indicate that they voted and participated in public life. It was not until 1723, in fact, that blacks were denied the right to vote in Virginia. According to Albert E. McKinley, blacks voted in South Carolina until 1701, in North Carolina until 1715, and in Georgia until 1754. Not only did pioneer blacks vote, but they also held public office. There was a black surety in York County, Virginia, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, and a black beadle in Lancaster County, Virginia.
Nor was this sort of thing confined to Virginia. The first blacks in Massachusetts -- they arrived in 1638 on the Desire, America's first slave ship -- were apparently assigned the status of indentured servants. In his classic work, The Negro in Colonial New England, Lorenzo J. Greene said that "until almost the end of the seventeenth century the records refer to the Negroes as 'servants' not as 'slaves.' For some time no definite status could be assigned to incoming Negroes. Some were sold for a period of time only, and like the white indentured servants became free after their indenture."
SOURCE: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower, Sixth Ed., Penguin Books, (1993) (First published 1962), pp. 37-38.
Mr. Bennett is executive editor of Ebony magazine and a recipient of the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Lerone Bennett, Jr.
