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Few things are as simple as we'd like to believe they are. Most of us want things summed up neatly, "good/bad," "right/wrong," but almost nothing is ever that simple.
Anthony Johnson is a critical, though often overlooked character in American history. His story sheds light upon the complexities of American slavery.
It is estimated that in his late teens, Johnson was captured in his native Angola by a neighboring, African enemy nation and sold to Arab slave traders. They, in turn, sold his services, as an indentured servant, "Antonio," to a merchant working for the Virginia Company.
Johnson was sold as an indentured servant to a white planter named Bennet to work on his Virginia tobacco farm.
Such workers typically worked under a limited indenture contract for four to seven years to pay off their passage, room, board, lodging, and freedom dues.
In the early colonial years, most Africans in the Thirteen Colonies were held under such contracts of limited indentured servitude. With the exception of those indentured for life, they were released after a contracted period, with many of the indentured receiving land and equipment after their contracts expired or were bought out. Most white laborers in this period also came to the colony as indentured servants.
Antonio nearly lost his life in an Indian massacre in 1622, when his owner's plantation was attacked by the Powhatan, the dominant Indian tribe in the Tidewater of Virginia. A tribe trying to forcibly expel the colonists from that area. They attacked the settlement where Johnson worked on Good Friday and killed 52 of the 57 men.
In 1623, "Mary, a Negro" arrived from England aboard the ship Margaret. She was brought to work on the same plantation as Antonio, where she was the only woman. Antonio and Mary married and lived together for more than forty years.
Around 1635, Antonio and Mary gained their freedom from indenture. Antonio changed his name to Anthony Johnson. Johnson first enters the legal record as a free man when he purchased a calf in 1647.
Johnson was granted a large plot of farmland by the colonial government after he paid off his indentured contract by his labor.
On July 24th, 1651, he acquired 250 acres (100 ha) of land under the headright system by buying the contracts of five indentured servants, one of whom was his son Richard Johnson. The land was located on the Great Naswattock Creek, which flowed into the Pungoteague River in Northampton County, Virginia.
In 1652 a fire severely damaged the Johnson family's property and Anthony Johnson applied to the courts for tax relief. The court reduced the family's taxes and on February 28th, 1652, exempting his wife Mary and their two daughters from paying taxes at all "during their natural lives."
At that time taxes were levied on people, not property. Under the 1645 Virginia taxation act, "all negro men and women and all other men from the age of 16 to 60 shall be judged tithable (taxable)."
It's unclear from the records why the Johnson women were exempted, but the change gave them the same social standing as white women, who were untaxed.
During the case, the justices noted that Anthony and Mary "have lived Inhabitants in Virginia (above thirty years)" and had been respected for their "hard labor and known service"
When Anthony Johnson was released from servitude, he was legally recognized as a "free Negro." He became a successful farmer. In 1651 he owned 250 acres (100 ha), and the services of five indentured servants (four white and one black).
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 then 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, flinding 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 in the United States, 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.
The legacy of Anthony Johnson shows the complexity of American slavery. Obviously freed blacks owned slaves and indentured servants (defacto slaves, either for long periods, or for life). In this early period, free blacks enjoyed "relative equality" with the white community. About 20% of free black Virginians owned their own homes and many owned indentured contracts on both black and white indentures.
By 1665, however, racism was becoming more common in the Americas. In 1662 the Virginia Colony passed a law that children in the colony were born with the social status of their mother, according to the Roman principle of partus sequitur ventrem. This meant that the children of slave women were born into slavery, even if their fathers were free, English, Christian, and white.
This was a reversal of English common law, which held that the children of English subjects took the social status of their father. Africans were considered foreigners and thus were not English subjects.
The story of Anthony Johnson helps explain why the likes of Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris descended from slave owning families and why the issue we simplify today, remains so complex.
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