The Freed Slave Who Became One of America’s First Black Slave Owners

The Case That Helped Create American Slavery

Anthony Johnson knew what it meant to be owned. He had been kidnapped from Angola, shipped across the Atlantic, and sold to a Virginia tobacco planter in 1621.

He survived a massacre, earned his freedom, built a 250-acre farm, and became one of the first Black landowners in colonial America. Then, in 1655, he went to court to make sure another Black man would never be free.

The ruling in his favor helped set a legal foundation for slavery that would last two centuries. What happened to Johnson’s own family afterward says everything about the system he helped create.

Kidnapped From Angola in 1621

The man who would become Anthony Johnson arrived in Virginia aboard the ship James in 1621.

He was captured in Portuguese Angola by African slave traders and sold to Portuguese slavers, who named him António and sold him into the Atlantic slave trade.

A colonist in Virginia acquired António, and as an indentured servant, he worked for a merchant at the Virginia Company. At the time, slavery as a permanent legal institution did not yet exist in Virginia.

Slave laws were not passed until 1661 in Virginia; before that date, Africans were not officially considered to be enslaved. Workers like António served under limited contracts, typically four to seven years.

He Survived the 1622 Massacre

António was put to work on Edward Bennett’s tobacco plantation near the James River. In March of 1622, local Tidewater Indians attacked Bennett’s plantation, killing fifty-two people.

Johnson was one of only five on the plantation who survived the attack.

The Powhatan were fighting to push colonists off their land, and Good Friday 1622 became one of the bloodiest days in early colonial history.

António almost died in the Indian massacre of 1622 when Bennett’s plantation was attacked. He had been in Virginia less than a year.

Mary Arrived and Changed Everything

In 1622, “Mary, a Negro Woman” arrived aboard the Margrett and John and like Anthony, she ended up on Bennett’s plantation. She was the only woman on the property.

António and Mary married and lived together for more than forty years.

Their partnership would produce at least four children, two sons and two daughters, and outlast almost every obstacle colonial Virginia threw at them.

The couple was respected in their community for their “hard labor and known service,” according to court documents.

From Servant to Landowner

Sometime after 1635, António and Mary concluded the terms of their indentured servitude. António changed his name to Anthony Johnson and began building wealth.

On July 24, 1651, he acquired 250 acres of land under the headright system by buying the contracts of five indentured servants, one of whom was his son, Richard Johnson.

The headright system gave planters 50 acres for each servant they brought to the colony. Johnson ran a tobacco farm using indentured servants.

Within 30 years of arriving in chains, he had become a prosperous farmer with land, cattle, and people working for him.

John Casor Demanded His Freedom

One of Johnson’s servants was a Black man named John Casor. In 1653, John Casor, a black indentured servant, filed what later became known as a freedom suit.

He said that he had been imported with an indenture of “seaven or eight yeares”, and that Johnson told him he did not have one after he attempted to reclaim it.

Casor claimed he had already served years beyond his contract. A white neighbor named Robert Parker believed him.

White planter Robert Parker secured the freedom of Anthony Johnson’s servant John Casor, who had convinced Parker and his brother George that he was an illegally detained indentured servant.

Johnson Sued to Get Him Back

Johnson was not willing to let Casor go. Anthony Johnson Negro made his complaint to the Court against mr. Robert Parker and declared that hee deteyneth his servant John Casor negro under pretence that the said Negro is a free man.

Johnson claimed he had never seen any indenture contract and that Casor belonged to him for life. The case went before the Northampton County Court.

Johnson sued Robert Parker in the case of Johnson v. Parker.

At first, Johnson’s own family pressured him to let Casor go, fearing he might lose his cattle in a countersuit. But Johnson pushed forward.

The Court Ruled Casor Was Property

On March 8, 1655, the court sided with Johnson. The Court seriously consideringe and maturely weighinge the premisses, doe fynde that the said Mr. Robert Parker most unjustly keepeth the said Negro from Anthony Johnson his master. The judge ordered Casor returned to Johnson and made Parker pay court costs.

John Casor became one of the first people of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be enslaved for life as a result of a civil suit. This was not punishment for a crime.

It was a property dispute, and Casor was ruled to be the property.

Virginia Made Slavery Hereditary

The Johnson ruling came before Virginia had formal slave codes, but the laws soon followed. A law making race-based slavery legal was passed in Virginia in 1661.

It allowed any free person the right to own slaves. The next year was even more significant.

In 1662, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law that said a child was born a slave if the mother was a slave.

Specifically, “all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.”

This broke with English common law and ensured slavery would be permanent and inherited through generations.

The Johnsons Left Virginia

By the mid-1660s, life on Virginia’s Eastern Shore had become harder for free Black families.

The Johnsons faced some discrimination because of their skin color and several attempts by neighboring whites to take their land.

Perhaps because of increasing harassment, the Johnsons moved to Somerset County, Maryland around 1665.

The Johnsons brought 14 head of cattle and 8 sheep with them when they moved to a less settled area on Wicomico Creek.

In 1666, Anthony Johnson signed a lease renting a 300-acre plot of land called “Tonies Vinyard” from a white man named Stephen Horsey.

They Seized His Land After He Died

Anthony Johnson died in 1670 on his Maryland farm.

He had survived kidnapping, a massacre, indentured servitude, and decades of building a life in a hostile land. But death did not protect his legacy.

In 1670, a jury of white men decided that “because he was a Negroe and by consequence an alien,” the Virginia land originally held by Johnson should revert to the Crown.

The system Johnson had used to claim ownership of another man now denied his own family the right to inherit. Mary survived her husband, and in her 1672 will she bequeathed a cow to each of her grandsons.

His Grandson Named the Farm Angola

The Johnson family did not disappear entirely. Mary lived into her 90s and kept the Maryland lease going.

In 1677, Anthony and Mary’s grandson, John Jr. , purchased a 44-acre farm which he named Angola.

It was a small piece of land, a fraction of what Anthony had once owned, but the name carried weight. Angola was where Anthony had been born free, before he was captured and shipped across an ocean.

Three generations later, his grandson still remembered.

The opportunities open to men and women like Anthony and Mary Johnson significantly narrowed as restrictions on the legal and economic rights of Black people hardened after 1670.

Visiting Slavery Museums Across the USA

If you want to understand how slavery shaped America, several museums across the country tell that story without flinching.

The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, sits on the site of a cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were forced to labor in bondage.

General admission is $5, open Wednesday through Sunday from 9am to 5pm, and your ticket includes the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park.

The International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, is located at Gadsden’s Wharf, where an estimated 45% of enslaved Africans entered this country. It is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 5pm, with adult tickets at $22. 50.

The Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, located between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is considered the first slavery-focused museum in the U. S. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, is the largest Black history museum in the country, and admission is free.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• Trump Wants to Allow Oil Drilling Near 1,000-Year-Old Native American Ruins
• Only 776 Out of 11,000 Air Traffic Controllers Get Trump’s $10K Shutdown Bonus
• How questions about travel bans revived debate over which countries Americans visit