Was the First Slave Owner in America a Black Man?

December 21, 2014

Stories

451 Comments

This image claiming that the first slave owner in America was a black man has been going around social media for the last few months. As is mentioned by commenter Ralph459, this is not a picture of Anthony Johnson, but that of former slave and abolitionist from Massachusetts, Lewis Hayden [1] This image says: “The First Slave Owner in America was not only a black man, but he went to court and demanded it”

There has been some argument as to what “America” really means as far as this image, South America was first called the Land of Americus, or America, in the Cosmographiae Introductio, printed on April 25, 1507, and it was later amended to add the name to North America as well, and in 1538, the geographer Gerard Mercator gave the name America to all of the Western Hemisphere on his Mapamundi.

African Slaves had been in the New World since at least 1501 when they were brought to modern day Brazil. But since this image is surely meant to use the 13 British Colonies, and not the United States of America, I will use them. I’m quite sure it wasn’t supposed to mean the United States of America, since in 1789 when it officially became a nation (When the Articles of Confederation were superseded by the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America) there were almost 700,000 slaves here already, and many laws had codified slavery, and some states had already abolished slavery by this point.

Slavery in the Colonies started nearly as soon as the colonies themselves, and information regarding these colonies is difficult to find due to so much being lost over the years and so much not documented to begin with. Slavery was first codified in 1641 in the Colonies. I will only write about slaves and slave laws that took place before 1655, the year mentioned in this image that case of Anthony Johnson vs Robert Parker happened.

Virginia

Virginia’s first slaves.

Let’s start at the beginning. I’m going to base this on the original 13 colonies, even though slaves were owned by other countries in what would later become US States. Jamestown, Virginia was the first colony, established in 1607 [2].

In 1619 John Rolfe (who served as secretary and recorder general of Virginia (1614–1619) and as a member of the governor’s Council (1614–1622)) was also responsible for the first mention of Africans in Virginia. In a letter to Sandys in January 1620, Rolfe noted that late in August 1619 the Dutch ship White Lion arrived at Point Comfort, at what is now Fort Monroe, with “20. and odd Negroes” on board.

About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunnes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. They mett with the Treasurer in the West Indyes, and determined to hold consort shipp hetherward, but in their passage lost one the other. He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victualls (whereof he was in greate need as he pretended) at the best and easyest rates they could. He hadd a lardge and ample Commyssion from his Excellency to range and to take purchase in the West Indyes.

Four days later, the English ship Treasurer arrived with additional Africans, the lot having been captured from a Portuguese ship carrying slaves en route from Luanda, Angola, to the West Indies. (The Treasurer was partly owned by Samuel Argall and was the same ship on which Argall had transported Rolfe and Pocahontas to England.) Rolfe’s letter is the first extant mention of Africans in Virginia, although there may have been others in the colony before then. [3] These Africans were stolen from Portuguese slave ships not merchant ships transporting indentured servants. The Governor at the time was Sir George Yeardley, and the Cape Merchant was Abraham Piersey. In Thomas D Morris’s book “Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860“ He says that Governor Yeardley in his will, written in 1627, listed these Africans separately from his indentured servants, and that the 1624 Census listed the blacks with no last names, but white indentured servants with surnames and contract completion dates.

_{20 slaves sold to colonists, Jamestown, 1619, negros}

While there is still some debate as to whether or not these Africans were slaves or indentured servants, the Virginia Library Archives References services tells me:

From the research completed thus far it appears that there is no mention of the existence of a bill of lading from the White Lion that documents the trade at Jamestown of the slaves that had been captured from the Portuguese vessel. Likewise there doesn’t appear to be any mention of an existing document that definitively designates the status of this group as a whole as being either indentured servants or slaves at that time. Records from gatherings do not indicate the marital status of the Africans (Mr., Miss, etc.) and, unlike white servants, no year is associated with the names — information vital in determining the end of a servant’s term of bondage. Most likely some Africans were slaves and some were servants.

Other Africans began to turn up in Virginia court records. On September 19, 1625, for instance, the General Court ordered Captain Nathaniel Bass to provide clothing for an African man named Brass (or Brase), who had come to Virginia with a Captain Jones and been sold to Captain Bass. The same decision awarded temporary custody of Brass to Lady Temperance Flowerdew Yeardley, the wife of Sir George Yeardley and a resident of Jamestown, who was then ordered to pay forty pounds of good tobacco per month for his labor “so long as he remayneth with her.” It was a decision that both distinguished between African servitude and slavery, and put a price on the labor of an African male.
The Library of Virginia
Archives Reference Services
800 E Broad Street
Richmond, VA  23219-8000

Virginia’s first legal cases involving slaves.

In 1640 the first case in Virginia to make an indentured servant a slave was that of John Punch.

On July 9, 1640, members of the General Court decided the punishment for three servants-a Dutchman, a Scotsman, and an African-who ran away from their master as a group. The proceedings reveal an example of interracial cooperation among servants at a time when the colony’s leaders were starting to create legal differences between Europeans and Africans. John Punch became the first African to be a slave for life by law in Virginia (and all 13 colonies).

Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath by order from this Board Brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away from the said Gwyn, the court doth therefore order that the said three servants shall receive the punishment of whipping and to have thirty stripes apiece one called Victor, a dutchman, the other a Scotchman called James Gregory, shall first serve out their times with their master according to their Indentures, and one whole year apiece after the time of their service is Expired. By their said Indentures in recompense of his Loss sustained by their absence and after that service to their said master is Expired to serve the colony for three whole years apiece, and that the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere [4]

In the second case, dated July 22, six white servants and a black man were caught running away, and their punishments varied. While four of the servants received lesser sentences, the other two were ordered whipped and branded on the cheek with the letter R, and several years were added to their indentures. One of these men was also sentenced to work for a year with a leg shackle. “Emanuel the Negro” suffered the same harsh sentence (and was also assigned a leg shackle), but because he presumably was a slave, he did not receive added years. [5][6]

Massachusetts

Massachusetts First Slaves

The exact date slaves first entered Massachusetts is unknown but many sources suggest Samuel Maverick was the first slaveholder in the colony after he arrived in early Boston in 1624 with two slaves. According to the book “Bound for America: The Forced Migration of Africans to the New World,” the first slaves imported directly from Africa to Massachusetts arrived in 1634.

A few years later, in December of 1638, a slave ship named Desire brought Boston’s first shipment of slaves from Barbados, whom had been exchanged for enslaved Pequot Indians from New England.

Massachusetts First Laws involving slaves.

In 1641, Governor John Winthrop, a slave owner himself, helped write the first law legalizing slavery in North America. In 1641 he helped write the Massachusetts Body of Liberties which was the first legal code established in Massachusetts. Liberty 91 claimed:

91. There shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, or captivity amongst us unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons cloth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority.

Which makes Massachusetts the first colony to legalize and codify slavery.

In 1643 The New England Confederation of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven adopted a fugitive slave law.

John Winthrop, 2nd, 6th, 9th, and 12th Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

New York

First Slaves in New York.

In Leslie M Harris’s book, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (Historical Studies of Urban America) she says the first slaves in the Colony of New York came in 1626, when 11 African slaves were imported by the Dutch West India Company. In 1635 roads were built by slaves, timber and firewood cut by slaves, and they cut and burned limestone and seashells used in outhouses. In 1636 settlers bought slaves from a ship’s captain from Providence Island, in 1642 a French privateer sold and unknown number of slaves, and in 1652 a Dutch privateer captured a Spanish ship and sold 44 of its African slaves to the settlers. By 1655 settlers were hoping to cash in on the slave trade, by buying slaves and reselling them to other settlements, when a Dutch ship Witte Paert brought 300 African Slaves.

“The first blacks to arrive in New Amsterdam were Paul d’ Angola, Simon Congo, Anthony Portuguese, John Francisco, and seven other males in 1626. Their names indicate that they may have been slaves on Portuguese or Spanish ships captured at sea. Three women were brought in from Angola in 1628. The Reverend Jonas Michaelius, first minister of the Dutch Reformed Church of New Netherland, gave his opinion of their value as maid‑servants: “the Angola slaves are thievish, lazy and useless trash.” These fourteen blacks formed 5.2 percent of the 270‑person population of New Amsterdam in 1628. ” [7]

First New York Laws involving slaves.

In 1640, New York passes a law that forbids residents from harboring or feeding runaway slaves.

In 1652, the first law establishing codes for Slaves and Slavery was written in New York, it was called the “Protection for Slaves” law, and were passed to prevent the mistreatment of slaves. Whipping was forbidden unless the owner received permission from authorities. Manumission of slaves was allowed.

New Hampshire

First slaves in New Hampshire

According to Dr. Dinah Mayo-Bobee’s Servile Discontents: Slavery and Resistance in Colonial New Hampshire, 1645–1785, African slaves were noted in New Hampshire by 1645. They concentrated in the area around Portsmouth.

The first known black person in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, came from the west coast of Africa in 1645. He was captured one Sunday when slave merchants attacked his village in Guinea, killing about a hundred persons and wounding others. Upon arrival in Boston, the slave was bought by a Mr. Williams “of Piscataqua.” When the General Court of the colony learned of the raid and kidnapping, the court ordered the merchants to return the African to his home. Slavery was not the issue of concern, for human bondage was legal in the region. The court was “indignant” that raiders had violated the Sabbath and that they had committed “ye haynos and crying sin of man stealing.” [8]

Connecticut

First Slaves in Connecticut

According to Benjamin Trumbull, a Connecticut Historian, who wrote “A complete history of Connecticut, civil and ecclesiastical, from the emigration of its first planters, from England, in the year 1630, to the year 1764 (v.002): and to the close of the Indian wars” the first slave in the state of Connecticut was Louis Berbice, killed at the Dutch Fort ‘in Hartford by Gysbert Opdyke in 1639. It is certain that ownership of negroes was common among the leading statemen of our early history. Theophilus Eaton, the first governor of New Haven Colony; JohnTalcott of Hartford; Edward Hopkins, second governor of Connecticut Colony, and founder of the famous Hopkins Grammar Schools, were all owners of slaves. John Pantry of Hartford owned them, and the inventories of the estates of Col. George Fenwick in 1660, and of John Latimer in 1662, show those eminent gentlemen to be in a like category.

Trumbull also said “it is certain that Africans were introduced into the Colonies as early as 1620, and the fact that slavery existed in New Haven Colony in 1644 shows that the custom was rooted in the very earliest history of the state. It must be said in extenuation that the early settlers were but following the practice obtaining in England, their mother country, from the time of Elizabeth, with the difference that the slaves in England were not black, but white; again, that if we were among the first to introduce African slavery, we were among the first to abolish that institution.” Which clearly shows that Connecticut slaves were not white at all, but black.

First laws involving slaves in Connecticut

The “Articles of Confederation” of 1643 is probably the first know law to involve “ownership” of people (aka slaves) a provision was made for the distribution among the inhabitants of “persons, as well as lands and goods, taken in the spoils of war.” [9]

It was almost by accident that slavery was officially recognized in Connecticut in 1650. The code of laws compiled for the colony in this year was especially harsh on the Indians. It was enacted that certain of them who incurred the displeasure of the colony might be made to serve the person injured or “be shipped out and exchanged for Negroes.” [10]

Delaware

First slave in Delaware

According to Alf Aberg’s book “The People of New Sweden” In 1639 Anthony, the first known enslaved African arrived in Delaware, the ship, the Fogel Grip, which accompanied Kalmal Nyckel, brings a 25th man from St. Kitts, a slave from Angola known as Anthony Swartz. He served Johan Printz, Governor of New Sweden. [11]

These are the slaves, slave owners, and slave laws passed before 1655, there are surely more, but these are the documented ones. While I am aware that I didn’t list all of the 13 colonies, this is because I stopped at 1655, and all other colonies either didn’t pass laws until after then, didn’t have any documents slaves before then, or weren’t established yet.

Anthony Johnson

This brings us to Anthony Johnson, Anthony Johnson first arrived in Virginia in 1621. Referred to as “Antonio a Negro” in early records, Anthony went to work on a tobacco plantation. It’s not clear whether he was an indentured servant (a servant contracted to work for a set amount of time) or a slave. [12] 1651, Johnson claimed 250 acres of land along Pungoteague Creek. He claimed the land by virtue of five headrights A headright was a colonial system put in place to help bring laborers to the new Colonies, in exchange for buying the contract for an indentured servant, the colonies would give the purchaser between 1 and 1000 acres each. In the case of Virginia it was given at a rate of 50 acres per indentured servant. So this means that Johnson had bought the contracts for 5 indentured servants, which typically had contracts of either 4 or 7 years. This is how Johnson came to have a servant named John Casor. However, 4 years later, John Casor escaped to a nearby farm owned by Robert Parker and claimed that Johnson had kept him longer than his indenture by “7 or 8 years” which is obviously not true since he had only acquired his contract 4 years prior.

The Civil Suit was against Robert Parker for taking his property, not against John Casor. According to the case transcript form the original archives, John Casor claimed to be an indentured servant, which might have possibly been true if you consider that Virginia gave Johnson a 50 acre headright for him, but Johnson said he was not, and that he was purchased as a slave (probably untrue for above reasons) but there was obviously no proof of indenture since Casor was returned to Johnson. According to the ruling he was not “an indentured servant made a slave as the result of a civil suit” as the court apparently believed he was already a slave. He did not go to court to demand it. The transcript follows [13]:

The deposition of Captain Samuel Goldsmith taken (in open court) 8th of March Sayth, That beinge at the howse of Anthony Johnson Negro (about the beginninge of November last to receive a hogshead of tobacco) a Negro called John Casar came to this Deponent, and told him that hee came into Virginia for seaven or Eight yeares (per Indenture) And that hee had demanded his freedome of his master Anthony Johnson; And further said that Johnson had kept him his servant seaven yeares longer than hee ought, And desired that this deponent would see that hee might have noe wronge, whereupon your Deponent demanded of Anthony Johnson his Indenture, hee answered, hee never sawe any; The said Negro (John Casor) replyed, hee came for a certayne tyme and had an Indenture Anthony Johnson said hee never did see any But that hee had him for his life; Further this deponent saith That mr. Robert Parker and George Parker they knew that the said Negro had an Indenture (in on Mr. Carye hundred on the other side of the Baye) And the said Anthony Johnson did not tell the negro goe free The said John Casor would recover most of his Cowes of him; Then Anthony Johnson (as this deponent did suppose) was in a feare. Upon this his Sonne in lawe, his wife and his 2 sonnes perswaded the said Anthony Johnson to sett the said John Casor free. more saith not

Samuel Goldsmith

This daye 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.) 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 as appeareth by the deposition of Captain Samuel Goldsmith and many probably circumstances. It is therefore the Judgment of the Court and ordered That the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of his said master Anthony Johnson, And that mr. Robert Parker make payment of all charge in the suit. also Execution.

Conclusion

While the case of Anthony Johnson and John Casor was not the case of the first slave, first slave owner, or first legal slave owner, it might possible have been the first civil case involving slavery, and at the very least is the first known example in the colonies of a black man owning either indenture servants or slaves. Slaves had been here since 1619, and all slaves had been “legal” slaves (and thus their owners “legal” slave owners) since the first law legalizing slavery passed. The first man to be considered a slave by a court of law was John Punch, and his owner Hugh Gwyn considered the first slave owner by a court of law. However it might be of interest to note that in 1670, when Johnson died, a court in Virginia ruled that, because “he was a Negro and by consequence an alien,” the land owned by Johnson (in Virginia) rightfully belonged to the Crown meaning that because he was a negro he did not have the legal right to own property to begin with. [14]

References

[1] http://nbhistoricalsociety.org/Important-Figures/lewis-hayden/
[2] http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/colonial/jb_colonial_jamestwn_1.html
[3] http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Rolfe_John_d_1622
[4] McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, p. 466. http://www.virtualjamestown.org/practise.html
[5] H. R. McIlwane, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia 1622–1632, 1670–1676 (Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1924), 466–467. http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/General_Court_Responds_to_Runaway_Servants_and_Slaves_1640
[6] http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Runaway_Slaves_and_Servants_in_Colonial_Virginia#start_entry
[7] http://www.geni.com/people/Simon-Congo/6000000013422175686
[8] http://www.seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/slaves.html
[9] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/art1613.asp
[10] https://archive.org/stream/codeof165000conn/codeof165000conn_djvu.txt
[11] https://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/pahistory/folder_1.html
[12] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p265.html
[13] Northampton County Order Book 1655–1668, fol. 10; via Warren M. Billings, ed., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606–1689 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), P. 180–181.
[14] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p265.html

The difference between slaves, and indentured servants.

An indentured servant is by definition “A person under contract to work for another person for a definite period of time, usually without pay but in exchange for free passage to a new country. During the seventeenth century most of the white laborers in Maryland and Virginia came from England as indentured servants.”

A slave is by definition “the condition in which one person is owned as property by another and is under the owner’s control, especially in involuntary servitude. Lifetime hereditary involuntary servitude.”

Slavery and the Making of America

By (author): James Oliver Horton, Lois E. Horton

The history of slavery is central to understanding the history of the United States. Slavery and the Making of America offers a richly illustrated, vividly written history that illuminates the human side of this inhumane institution, presenting it largely through stories of the slaves themselves.

Readers will discover a wide ranging and sharply nuanced look at American slavery, from the first Africans brought to British colonies in the early seventeenth century to the end of Reconstruction. The authors document the horrors of slavery, particularly in the deep South, and describe the slaves’ valiant struggles to free themselves from bondage. There are dramatic tales of escape by slaves such as William and Ellen Craft and Dred Scott’s doomed attempt to win his freedom through the Supreme Court. We see how slavery engendered violence in our nation, from bloody confrontations that broke out in American cities over fugitive slaves, to the cataclysm of the Civil War. The book is also filled with stories of remarkable African Americans like Sergeant William H. Carney, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery at the crucial assault on Fort Wagner during the Civil War, and Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, a former slave who led freed African Americans to a new life on the American frontier. Filled with absorbing and inspirational accounts highlighted by more than one hundred pictures and illustrations, Slavery and the Making of America is a gripping account of the struggles of African Americans against the iniquity of slavery.

List Price:	$24.99 USD
New From:	$10.82 USD In Stock
Used from:	$3.63 USD In Stock

Amber Rees

The difference that you fail to discuss is the transition from indentured servant to slavery as we were taught. This man didn’t want to let his slaves go after they completed the required work, so he did petition to permanently change slavery. You might want to also discuss Irish slavery, which was even more brutal. No need to revise history.
- bja
  
  If you read the actual case of Anthony Johnson and John Casor, it had little to do with Casor, and more to do with Robert Parker trying to take him as his own. In the court case, the judge demanded that Casor be returned to Johnson, but he never actually ruled that Casor be made a slave for life.
  
  ” It is therefore the Judgment of the Court and ordered That the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of his said master Anthony Johnson, And that mr. Robert Parker make payment of all charge in the suit.”
  
  Also I know plenty about Irish “Slavery” in that it was indentured servants and not slaves, and that it started around 1641, while slavery started here in 1619, so it has nothing to do with this post about Anthony Johnson, the first slave owners, or slavery for that matter.
  
  What exactly is a revision of History in any of this, other that your mention of “Irish Slavery”?
- IndependenceIsNotFree
  
  Deny, Deflect, Project (DDP). Why can’t Americans just accept the truth instead of denying it, deflecting from it or projecting it on to others. Look, even if Irish Slavery was horrible you seem not to grasp the point to well. Who were the oppressors? You see, African Americans have never OPPRESSED white people, I’m not saying whites were not slaves. I’m not even saying blacks have not done bad things to white people. I am saying that African Americans have NEVER written or created laws in the United States to OPPRESS a single race of people. This is ONLY unique of white people, only White Americans did this. It is one thing to name call it is another to conduct individual violent activity. It is a WHOLE OTHER THING to oppress an entire race because of the color of their skin. You are correct many have been slaves and have gone through trials and tribulations but that is not the point. The question is, WHO CREATED THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS? Even for the Irish, who were the oppressors of them? Africans, Chinese, NOPE. Most importantly was it even within the 1900’s? #STOPYOURDENIAL
  - BJA
    
    Ye, exactly. The fact the the first slave owner, or even the first legal slave owner was a black man, which is untrue, has little to nothing to do with slavery to begin with.
Jacquelyn

I would say then that the Dutchman did not truly own slaves first for the simple reason was that he had indentured servants and as their punishment by law they were his servants for the rest of their lives. This does not make the case that he was the first true slave owner and being that only one of the the three were black there is truly no case it was racial or anything other than they tried to run away from their own responsibility for going to the US. Considering today if I ran away from paying my debts then I could be punished by law in jail or liens on property until they are paid.
- bja
  
  He wasn’t the first slave owner, he was the first “legal” slave owner, as in the first to have a servant claimed to him for life by a court of law, and not the set period of time as in indentured servants. The two white men in the case were each given an extra year of servitude, while the African was ordered to serve the rest of his natural life.
  
  “Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath by order from this Board Brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away from the said Gwyn, the court doth therefore order that the said three servants shall receive the punishment of whipping and to have thirty stripes apiece one called Victor, a dutchman, the other a Scotchman called James Gregory, shall first serve out their times with their master according to their Indentures, and one whole year apiece after the time of their service is Expired. By their said Indentures in recompense of his Loss sustained by their absence and after that service to their said master is Expired to serve the colony for three whole years apiece, and that the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.”
Dan

This is such a funny article “Myth Debunked” lol. It appears to be trying to minimize the fact that not only whites were slave owners in the U.S. I see there are a lot of deniers when it comes to blacks (African American) being owners of black slaves.

Facts like the most ruthless slave owner was a black man, and that black slave owners in Louisiana supported the institution of slavery and sided with the confederacy during the civil war.
- bja
  
  No, actually, this article attempts to debunk the myth that a black man was the first slave owner in America. Nothing more, nothing less, stop trying to make it about something it isn’t.
  - Thelakers1
    
    Wrong, it’s a hit piece designed to hide the fact that blacks were stolen and sold to the British colonies by other Africans eventually under Dutch rule.
    
    America stopped it. All those on the left should be praising the USA for stopping it. But what do they do, smear the facts like this article does and spew lies to go with their motive.
    - BJA
      
      Sorry, you are wrong. The image in question makes the claim that the first slave owner in america was a black man, which is false. that is what this article is about, not who brought the slaves to America, how the slaves became slaves, who the first slave owners were in other parts of the world, etc.
      
      I imagine you have some sort of proof or citations or something to back up your claims that this article is smearing facts and spewing lies, or are we just supposed to believe you know what you are talking about?
      
      Also, FYI, America was one of the last industrialized nations to abolish slavery, and the only one to have a civil war over it.
      - DucDucGoose
        
        you fail to mention the irish slaves that were considered subhuman by the english. They absolutely were slaves and there were more of them. Being a victim is a far greater form of slavery.
      - BJA
        
        There were about 300,000 Irish indentured servants, compared to 12 million African slaves. slavery and indentured servitude isn’t the same thing, they may be treated the same at some point, and I’m sure a lot of, if not most, indentured servants were treated poorly.
        
        There were lots of unfree people in the 17th century: serfs, servants, criminals, galley rowers, draftees, victims of impressment, and chattel slaves. Only slaves were subject to lifetime hereditary servitude, and this never happened to the Irish.
      - Lord Wrayth Gerik
        
        What year were the ‘Irish Slaves’ emanicipated?
      - Thelakers1
        
        And your proof or evidence or should I just believe u?????
        
        if u want to be factual, slaves weren’t slaves at first. They were called indentured servants (yes they were slaves, servant is a lame term, but most were white men up until then) . So yea, by a lame technicality when slavery was made official the first “slave” by the new law was a black man owned by a black man. Many black men were indentured servants prior to that (a fact they omit)
        
        My point was how they completely ignore the prior facts, and tell you an after the fact story that fits their narrative.
        
        You don’t have to believe me. I’d hope you go do the research yourself. That’s what I did with your comments. Facts always win though.
      - BJA
        
        You are kidding right? Did you miss the references section of the article? that is my proof. What proof or references have you given other than “you said so”? If you had done any research on my comments you would see that I was correct, that Anthony Johnson wasn’t the first slave owner, or even the first legal slave owner. Unless you used all of the conservative blogs which are making this claim as “fact”
        
        You obviously don’t know the difference in slaves and indentured servants. slavery is older than written history, The earliest known records of it are in the Neolithic era, and indentured servitude was created in the 18th century in England.
        
        And no, he wasn’t even the first slave owner by a technicality, did you even read the article (or a history book for that matter) John Punch was the first black man made a legal slave for life 15 years prior to the John Casor case.
        
        Regardless of their country of origin, many early immigrants were indentured servants, people who sold their labor in exchange for passage to the New World and housing on their arrival. Initially, most laws passed concerned indentured servants, but around the middle of the seventeenth century, colonial laws began to reflect differences between indentured servants and slaves. More important, the laws began to differentiate between races: the association of “servitude for natural life” with people of African descent became common. Re Negro John Punch (1640) was one of the early cases that made a racial distinction among indentured servants
        
        Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, 5 vols. (1926; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1968; KF4545.S5 C3 1968)
        
        You say “they” are ignoring the facts while you are completely ignoring the facts and not giving any basis on where your facts come from or why they are more factual.
        
        You have a pretty strong case of Illusory of truth effect bias going on.
      - Thelakers1
        
        not even close.
        
        Next you’ll tell me it wasnt the democrats who blocked slavery from being abolished in the first place.
        
        Silly liberals always trying to rewrite history to cover up their parties past mistakes.
      - BJA
        
        Just curious what you think is “not even close”?
      - Thelakers1
        
        Not even close. I’ll give u a few of my examples. Obamacare was “not even close” to being a crappy piece of legislation its garbage. Obama’s administration is “not even close” to being the most transparent administration in history. He is “Not even close” to lowering our national debt.
      - BJA
        
        You know what, I agree with you on every single one of those points, but not one of those has a single solitary inkling of anything to do with your original response of “not even close” to my other post. Could you possibly stick to the conversation at hand here?
      - Thelakers1
        
        You asked what my idea of not even close was. I gave you a few exanples. Next.
      - BJA
        
        You’re not even paying attention are you? I asked what your idea of close was in response to my post that started “You are kidding right?” in which you responded “not even close” I wasn’t asking for your general opinion on things not even being discussed by anyone here.
      - Thelakers1
        
        Paying attention to you is like watching paint dry. You interjected into a convo. You brought up stuff from 3500bc then called me out for being irrelevant to the point of the article.
        
        Are you paying attention?
      - BJA
        
        You replied to me first, so how exactly am I interjecting into the conversation?
      - Thelakers1
        
        My bad there. Thought Jon was the original guy, obviously looked at it wrong.
        
        Doesn’t change the fact you called me out for random stuff when u brought up 3500bc.
      - Jonah Giacalone
        
        Yes, they started out as indentured servants and there were blacks in Africa who helped the slavers round up and capture their own countrymen. Those are facts that are well known, at least they were when I went to school. This article attempts to disprove the contention that slavery started with a black man, a suggestion being proliferated by right-wing websites to try and make some sort of equivalence between white slave owners and non-white to lessen the historical shame of slavery – trying to make the point that slavery was not a racial institution but a human one since both whites and blacks were indentured. Well, I don’t recall reading about shiploads of white people being captured from Europe to be slaves in the U.S. And while the U.S. did end legal slavery, it was the last civilized country to do so and there was no indication that slavery was on the decline at the time of the civil war. On the contrary, there was political pressure to expand it to the new territories in the west.
      - Thelakers1
        
        I don’t think it’s trying to say slavery was started by a black man. I think that’s something u made up in your head when reading it. Just like how we should be ashamed. This happened hundreds of years ago, done by people we have nothing to do with.
        
        Then u make up things by saying I got my facts by a right wing site. My facts came from my college classroom on us history. Same as u say yours did.
        
        Stop blaming me and the rest of the good folks in this nation for something we had no control over and nothing to do with! Blame Africa and the Dutchman. We have a black president for christs sake.
      - BJA
        
        Right, nothing in the original “meme” or response article tries to make the claim that Slavery was started by black people, the original image says “first slave owner in america”. Slavery dates to well before there was an America, before law, and even before there was much civilization to begin with.
        
        The earliest artifacts known that historians believe are about slavery occur in the Chasséen culture (3500 to 4500 BC France) the very first stylus-on-clay-tablet cuneiform records of ancient Samarra which are the very first human records, are records of slavery. The price of slaves, counts of slaves, how they were acquired through conflict, and so forth which means that slavery is also pre-law since the Code of Hammurabi (1750 BC Mesopotamia) which is the first known written legal code, and as much as 30% of the Code of Hammurabi contains the first written rules of slavery.
- TheBrian
  
  Yeah. I get that vibe from it, as well. bja is correct that it is attempting to debunk, but I also sense what you are sensing from the article, Dan.
  
  I wonder if they would like to debunk the reports of Africans capturing other Africans to be sold, or traded, to slave traders? The tone of that article would probably do a lot to either prove, or debunk, what it is that we have sensed about this article.
- Warrior KM
  
  This article is not even remotely “trying to minimize the facet that not only whites were slave owners on the U.S.”, as you stated.
  
  The objective is obviously stating that a black man was not the first slave owner in America; debunking the ridiculous myth that you seem to want to desperately believe.
  
  Comprehension is key, mate.
rj

@Dan “Facts like the most ruthless slave owner was a black man, and that black slave owners in Louisiana supported the institution of slavery and sided with the confederacy during the civil war.”

There were no “black slave owners” in Louisiana. There was a caste of mixed race people recognized as heirs of whites, known as the Creoles. That’s a different thing than saying that “blacks just got out of slavery and started owning plantations”. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2821/before-the-civil-war-were-some-slave-owners-black
- Bobby English
  
  YEAH!
  
  Obama’s father’s people were SLAVE OWNERS!
  
  According to the TEACHINGS OF THE NOI, Obama is the son of a WHITE DEVIL!
  
  THE SON OF SATAN?
  
  Will someone ask the Honorable Minister, Louis Farrakhan,
  
  “Why are you not preaching what Elijah Muhammad told you to preach”?
  
  “WHITES ARE DEVILS”!
  
  “BLACKS ARE GODS”!
  
  Why are “historians” pretending that it wasn’t DUTCH JEWS, who shipped BLACK & WHITE SLAVES to the Americas?
  
  Remember: The GOD of Louis Farrakhan is WALLACE FARD and ELIJAH MUHAMMAD is his Prophet.
  
  And the live in a BIG ufo, flying around in the sky!
  
  Louie drives around in his ROLLS ROYCE and LEXUS and lives in an ornate Palace type house!
  
  I AM SICK & TIRED OF BLACKS PLAYING THE “SLAVE” CARD, WHEN THE IRISH WERE TREATED AS DIRT! THE NEGROES USED TO COMPLAIN TO THEIR MASTERS, “YOU ARE TREATING US LIKE THE IRISH”!
  
  NOW E–K OFF, ALL YOU ASSHOLES!
  - BJA
    
    His white family (mothers side) were verified slave owners, can’t say the same for his fathers side. I suggest if you are gong to comment here you bring some proof, and stop being a jerk.
    - Bobby English
      
      Obama’s African Forebears Were Slave Traders
      
      In the 18th century, Muslim slavers moved into the interior of Kenya for the purpose of exploiting blood rivalries between local tribes.
      Muslims encouraged warring tribes, Obama Jr’s Luo ancestors included, to capture “prisoners of war” and sell them into slavery.
      
      Kenya tribe leaders, also exported slaves and ivory that had been exchanged by Africans from the interior for salt, cloth, beads, and metal goods. The slaves were then marched to the coast and shipped to Muslim Zanzibar (an island South of Kenya), to be traded again.
      
      African slaves and ivory became hugely profitable and Zanzibar Muslims grew rich on the trade. Slave trading continued despite the public outrage in Europe demanding an end to all slave trade.
      
      The British, eventually brought their forceful anti-slavery message directly to the Muslim Sultan.
      
      After years of pressure, the Sultan finally relented and agreed to ban slavery in 1847. It was not until 1876, 11 years after the American Civil War had ended, that the sale of slaves was finally prohibited in Zanzibar.
      
      Guess Who Bought These Slaves?
      
      Obama’s American Forebears Were Slave Owners
      
      Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Obama Jr’s father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas. But, (quoting a Mar.2, 2007 report in the Baltimore Sun), “an intriguing sliver of his [Obama
      Jr.] family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.
      
      ” . . . The records could add a new dimension to questions by some who have asked whether Obama – who was raised in East Asia and Hawaii and educated at Columbia and Harvard – is attuned to the struggles of
      American blacks descended from West African slaves.”
      
      While many including Obama blame white people for slavery, they need to check the facts first!!
      
      The Meaning Of The Post Is: Obama’s Relatives Never Were Brought Here Into Slavery, Because Obama’s Muslim Family Were The Ones Rounding Up
      The African Slaves!! Obama loathes white people calling them: Devils, Haunting Ghosts, Ignorant, Oppressors, etc… When It Was The Europian White Christians that Fought & Died to End Slavery, Both In Africa and America!!
      
      As Obama says: his Grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama is Arab.
      Obama’s maternal Grandmother, Akuma, was kiddnapped, raped and enslaved by Oyango until she finally escaped, like many girls he had before. So
      his own Grandmother in Africa was a slave to his Arabic Muslim Grandfather. This is according to Sarah Obama, Barack’s step-Grandmother and mentioned in Barack’s OWN Memoir.
      
      So Both his African-Arabic Muslim Grandfather and his white Grandparents owned slaves.
      
      Muhammad had BLACK slaves and Muslim Arabs have enslaved BLACKS for 1400 years!
      - BJA
        
        Your entire copy and pasted article is nothing more than speculation assumption, and conjecture. It is literally trying to say that because there was slavery in kenya, and obama’s family was from kenya, his family must have been slave owners. brilliant! I guess I could make the same assumption about you using that logic. His mothers family has genealogical proof that they were slave owners, there is ZERO evidential proof from his fathers side.
        
        As far as Obama’s family, his family is Luo Kenyan (they are black africans) not Arab , His grandfather was not arab and his Obama never claimed they were Arab. Here is a family picture of Obamas Kenyan Family:
        
        http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/1family.jpg
        
        Here is an Arab family:
        http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2008/11/03/arablabour460.jpg
        
        See the similarities? nope.
        
        This is obama’s father, and another Luo Kenyan man:
        http://www.arogundade.com/Resources/barack-obama-bla.jpeg
        http://www.marlenefrancia.com/Photos/Portraits/Luo—6969WT.jpg
        
        This is an Arab man:
        http://www.robinwyatt.org/photography/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/egypt-fayoum-wadi-el-rayan-arab-man-smoking-keffiyeh-sky.jpg
        
        Still not seeing the similarities? nope.
        
        Now, if Obama was half white, half arab, he would look more like this:
        
        http://web-images.chacha.com/images/Gallery/4341/dress-code-crackdowns-1068983085-aug-8-2012-1-600×400.jpg
        
        Obama’s grandfather, like 90% of Kenyan’s, was born Christian (Kenya is 90% christian and has been a majority christian since Portugal introduced it in the 1400’s, Muslims have been a small minority since Islam first arrived, in fact Islam didn’t even get the west part of the state until almost the 1900’s) and converted to Islam as an adult, Obama’s father was born Muslim, and became Atheist as a young adult.
        
        Everything else you have said, or claimed obama said is false as well, he never said his grandfather was Arab, the claims about his grandmother being a slave are made up, etc.. If you try to find any record of any of this, you find nothing but the same copy and paste article you have posted, made on several forums and facebook pages, none of which provide any source, reference, citation, or anything else.
      - Pax Humana
        
        BJA, you are full of shit. Furthermore, Muslims have, both historically AND currently, enslaved countless people from Africa, that is, when the people of Africa were not busy enslaving one another, anyway.
      - BJA
        
        What exactly am I full of shit about? please specify.
      - Pax Humana
        
        How about everything that came out of your mouth?
      - enviropal99
        
        If only we had followed the Muslim practice of castrating male slaves.
      - BJA
        
        Americans didn’t do that for one simple reason. They needed more slaves. The international slave trade was outlawed, so the only way the south could get more slaves was to produce more through breeding.
  - Robert Jones
    
    Are you on crack? Gods aren’t real.
    - Bobby English
      
      The GAME says they are!
      
      And its the only GAME in town!
      
      BUSH – CLINTON – OBAMA – “ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE”!
      
      Now these bastards are HEDONISTIC in their lifestyle, but they play the GOD CARD, when it suits them!
      
      Fact is, there have been thousands of “gods” in history and the “god” of Judaism – Romanism – Islam is dominant all over the world!
      
      From the beginning of time, “gods” have been used to keep the masses on their knees!
      - Pax Humana
        
        The reality is that if we do not make up gods to worship, then we will become gods ourselves, for we are not meant to become directionless and aimless in our lives, nor are we meant to become gods, goddesses, and the like because we can not even control our own human nature, let alone control the forces of the supernatural. We honestly do not even know what we are doing with things like CERN and we are supposed to believe and accept the words of those people proclaiming us to be safe in our lives?
      - Crysostomos
        
        Your facts are invalid and you are way off. Put down the comic books. Islam is not even close and Islam is obviously deceiving but the wise shall endure this evil entity.
    - Pax Humana
      
      Prove it, you dumb fuck.
      - Pax Humana
        
        I will also send you on express route to meet Him if you try and murder myself in cold blood in real life, Robert Jones.
- enviropal99
  
  Then how did a recently freed slave end up in court to become the first true lifetime hereditary slave owner? Are you also assuming he was mixed blood and not a real Black? Where is your evidence for such a conclusion?
- Pax Humana
  
  rj, you are full of shit. Furthermore, in Africa, people were enslaved all the time, even from within their same tribes and countries by their own leaders. Also, how else did the so-called “mixed race” people come to existence? The reality is that it does not take a genius to figure out that racism is a universal evil that must be banned by EVERYONE because ALL of our ancestors are guilty of sin and that is what slavery is, that is, we are prisoners of our sin and, without YAHASHUA HA’MASHIACH in our lives, we are nothing but indentured servants in a state of perpetual debt to evil in our lives, period, full stop.
- GWS Jr.
  
  Nicolas Augustin Metoyer of Louisiana owned 13 slaves in 1830. He and his 12 family members collectively owned 215 slaves. He was black. Feel free to verify through many sources. There were black slave owners in all 13 colonies and Northen states who condoned slavery. It’s almost a statistical improbability NOT to have black slave owners due to sheer numbers, economical, and humanitarian reasons.
  - Tammy Jeune
    
    free blacks who worked scores of slaves on their own plantations often bought, sold and employed them — like their white counterparts — for other than economic reasons.
    
    Coincoin’s eldest son, Augustin Metoyer, bought his first slave from a neighbor to help clear his plantation. But his second purchase was his wife’s 8-year-old sister. His third was the young daughter of his still-enslaved brother Louis, and his fourth was a 15-year-old who would marry his brother Pierre. The last three he immediately set free.
    
    Augustin later bought an 18-year-old with an infant as a wife for his first slave; a male slave who was his wife’s brother (allowed to work his way to freedom), and two more slaves, one of whom he freed four years later. And so on.
Hannah Harden

This is false when they were brought here they were more like bondservants , meaning they would work for others to pay for their land, citizenship , etc. They were not “owned” or treated as personal property . Why keep lying to people ?
- DucDucGoose
  
  wrong they were hunted property even as indentured servants
Caleb

Yea, as other point out there is a distinction between indentured servant and slave. Your argument is that the first African indentured servant was the first slave. Even more the punishment slavery doesn’t hold up because courts hold prisoners may still be considered slaves today. which holds the First legal slave holder was a black man.
Phelony Jones

SO how do we handle reparations here? His family has to pay themselves perhaps?
Zod

I like how this site leaves out a very important fact. A. Johnson was not the first slave owner, as this site says “as an institution slavery didn’t exist yet” when slavery began. THE IMPORTANT FACT about A. Johnson is that he was the first LEGAL SLAVE OWNER! As an institution, when slavery began, he was the first LEGAL SLAVE OWNER! I don’t see any mention of that in this supposed “myth debunk”
Greg Hoornenborg

The punishment for an indentured servant running away was the same, no matter what the colour. I think it just goes to show that people are people, and anyone can be greedy and want to use other people at any cost to gain. Colour has nothing to do with it. A lot of people are just jerks.
- BJA
  
  I can’t speak for every case obviously, but the landmark case of Hugh Gwyn/John Punch as mentioned here, did not have results like you mention. There were three runaway servants, Victor, a dutchman, the other a Scotchman called James Gregory, and an African named John Punch.
  
  They all had the same indenture, all escaped together, and were caught together, the two white men were punished to “”first serve out their times with their master according to their Indentures, and one whole year apiece after the time of their service is Expired” and the negro John Punch “shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.” John Punch became the first African to be a slave for life by law in Virginia.
Hal Fassett

Probably true, but all were slaves from Africa sold by the Arabs mainly to south America, not america
- BJA
  
  No, slaves were sold to North America directly, how do you think they got here? If you read the last paragraph you will see the first 20 slaves in America were sold by the Dutch to the Jamestown Colony.
  - usmcpgw
    
    bah! irish were slaves BEFORE blacks in the British colonies…….
    
    the Dutch ship had attacked a Spanish ship and captured those blacks. and then sold them as indentured servants
    
    oops the papers on record show the words SERVANTS……
    
    and at the time?
    
    The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
    
    Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
    
    From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
    
    During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
    - BJA
      
      The first Irish that came to the colonies came in 1621, two years after the 20 Africans, and the 20 Angolan Africans that were sold to the Jamestown colony were sold to the Governor of Jamestown as slaves, however, as Angolans, they were Christians, and Christians didn’t believe in enslaving other Christians, so they were released as slaves into indentured servitude, and eventually won their freedom.
      - usmcpgw
        
        they were captured by the Dutch when they dutch attacked a Spanish ship.
        
        the BIL OF LAIDING sold them as ” endentured servants”
        
        Indentured to Chattel
        
        Gradual Change of Status. There was a gradual change in the status of African Americans from indentured servants to chattel slaves.
        
        1640 Virginia Courts. In 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced one of the first black indentured servants to slavery.
        
        John Casor. In 1654, John Casor became the first legal slave in America. Anthony Johnson, previously an African indentured slave, claimed John Casor as his slave. The Northampton County rule against Casor, and declared him propter for life by Anthony Johnson.Since Africans were not English, they were not covered by the English Common Law.
        
        According to the African-American Chairman of President William Clinton’s Commission on Race, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin:
        
        “On April 10, 1606 the Virginia Company of London was granted a royal charter by King James I, awarding it a large tract of land in present day Virginia, Delaware and Maryland.
        
        On May 13, 1607 three small ships, Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery, arrived at Cape Henry, sailed up the James River, and landed at present-day Jamestown (“James Towne”). Following a 131-day voyage crowded in damp, cold, foul smelling holds in the darkness beneath the decks, 104 settlers, including twelve servants, disembarked and established a rough log fortress.
        
        …In August 1619, more than a year before the landing of the ship Mayflower, a captured Dutch man-of-war, with a Spanish captain name Jope and an English pilot named Marmaduke, anchored in the James River near Jamestown. On board were “20 and odd” men and women of African descent. The Virginia colony was in need of laborers, while the captain and his crew were in need of supplies. A bargain was struck and twenty Negroes, the first of their race in the colonies, were sold to the colonists, fresh food and water was brought aboard, and the ship sailed away.
        
        notice two things
        
        bill of laiding states servants
        
        two, in 1607 the servants were Irish and in 1619 the first black servants were the ones captured by the dutch from a Spanish ship
        
        then notice durante vite (servitude for life
        ) is not the same as ndentured servants. They were listed in the census counts of 1623 and 1624; and as late as 1651
        
        Before 1643 servants without indentures generally became freemen after a term of service varying from two to eight years. After 1643, the terms of servants “brought into the colony without indentures or covenants to testify to their agreement” were fixed at four to seven years, the period varying somewhat with the age of the servant. It was the custom and later the law that a redemptioner, white or black, received from his master at the time of his discharge a certain amount of property called “freedom dues.” In 1660 Virginia custom was to give each new freeman “3 barrels of corn and suit of clothes.”
        
        …In1651 Anthony Johnson [a negro] was given 250 acres as “head rights” for purchasing five incoming white redemptioners.
        
        …In 1652 John Johnson, Anthony Johnson’s eldest son, purchased eleven incoming white males and females, and received 550 acres adjacent to his father.
        
        …There were a number of additional Virginia land patents representing grants to free blacks of from fifty to 550 acres for purchasing white redemptioners. For example, on April 18, 1667 Emanuel Cabew received fifty acres in James City County, and in 1668 fifty acres were deed to John Harris of Queen’s Creek. Francis Payne paid for his freedom in 1650 by purchasing three incoming whites for his master’s use.
      - usmcpgw
        
        and they were not listed as Christians. they were listed as redemptioners..
        
        do you know the history of what happened to redemptioners?
        
        so please simply include all the facts. like the “servants” in 1607 were the same as the “servants” in 1619
        
        In addition to owning white redemptioners, Anthony and Mary Johnson also owned black servants. In the 1640’s John Casor was brought to the Virginia Colony, where he was purchased by Anthony Johnson. In 1653 Casor filed a complaint in Virginia’s Northamption County Court, claiming that his master had unjustly extended the term of his servitude with the intent of keeping Casor his servant for life. In his formal written pleading Casor alleged: “Yt hee come unto Virginia for seaven or eight years of Indenture, yt he had demanded his freedom of Anth. Johnson his masfter; & further sd yt hee had kept him his servt seaven years longer than he should or ought.” [Original spelling.] Johnson, insisting he knew nothing of an indenture, fought hard to retain what he regarded as his personal property, stating, “hee had ye Negro for his life.” On March 5, 1655 the presiding judge, Captain Samuel Goldsmith, ruled that “the said Jno Caster Negro shall forthwith bee returned to the service of his master Anthony Johnson.” Casor went with the Johnson’s to Maryland and was still owned by Mary Johnson in 1672.
        
        Durante vite (servitude for life) had not existed in the colonies – except for a small number of white convicts transported from the British Isles – until Anthony and Mary Johnson won the judicial determination making John Castor their servant for life. It was not until 1670 that the Virginia legislature enacted durante vite by providing that “all servants not being Christians imported into this colony by shipping are to be slaves for their lives, but such servants as come are to serve, if boys or girls, until 30 years of age, if men or women, 12 years and no longer.”
        
        Blacks and Indians came to own, and abuse, whites in Virginia in such large numbers that in 1670 the House of Burgesses (legislature) proclaimed that ” . . . noe negro or Indian though baptyised and enjoyned their own ffreedome shall be capable of any purchase of christians, but yet not debarred from buying any of their own nation.” [Original spelling.] “Christian” was a euphemism of the period for Caucasian. Virginia’s Slave Code of 1705 provided: “That no negroes, mulattos, Indians, although christians, ore Jew, Moore, Mahometans, or other infidels, shall at any time, purchase any Christian, nor any other, except of their own complexion, or such as are declared slaves by this act.”
      - BJA
        
        If you have some proof of the parts about the first 20 Africans, such as a book or archive or some sort, I’d appreciate it, because nothing that I have read of it is similar to what you are telling me. Including John Rolfe’s writings, national archives, and historians accounts.
        
        Also redemptioners were European immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries, Angolans were African Christians (Angola has been a Christian country since the 1400’s)
        
        Also, as already stated multiple times (including in the article), John Casor was not the first legal slave, and as such Anthony Johnson was not the first legal slave owner. His civil case (not criminal) took place in 1655
        
        “On March 8, 1655, the Northampton County Court ruled in favor of Anthony Johnson, a free man of African descent, when he was accused of keeping an indentured servant as a slave.”
        
        15 years prior to that, was the criminal case of John Punch and Hugh Gwyn:
        
        On July 9, 1640, members of the General Court decided the punishment for three servants-a Dutchman, a Scotsman, and an African-who ran away from their master as a group. The proceedings reveal an example of interracial cooperation among servants at a time when the colony’s leaders were starting to create legal differences between Europeans and Africans. John Punch became the first African to be a slave for life by law in Virginia.
        
        http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Court_Ruling_on_Anthony_Johnson_and_His_Servant_1655
        http://www.virtualjamestown.org/practise.html
      - usmcpgw
        
        Virginia historical archives ( not available on line) where the documents are kept is where I got my information. you will have to go there yourself like I did and use a FOIA request and they will not do the research for you.
        
        the Angolans were aboard a Spanish ship. captured by the Dutch. that is online
        
        the Angolans were not of the English Church and were thus considered redemptioners. ( general classification).
        
        Angola has also had islam there and today the Angolan government is destroying mosques that have been there since the late 1500’s
        
        because the John Punch and High Gwyn were CRIMINAL cases…… they are not seen like you stated as a civil case. because they were tried in a criminal court and not a civil court. their permanent enslavement was not bound across society. the fact the other case was tried in civil court is what decided the affect as to civil rights. slavery was tried as rights case. thus in affect turning NOT a criminal who can be sentenced to life….. but a noncriminal who can be sentenced to life. that is outside the criminal punishment code and into the civil rights area
        
        so a Scottsman? but according to your posts. ONLY blacks were slaves? nope! the Irish were listed as were all others as servants.
        
        the mistake is in the usage of indentured. as that denotes a contractual agreement from both parties.
        
        but the Dutch (ship White Lion were sold in exchange for food and some were transported to Jamestown,) who had captured the Spanish ship (São João Bautista)
        
        now there is speculation as to wether it was a Dutch vessel, Portugese vessel or an English vessel.
        
        but Dutch and English records both reference to the vessel as their own
        
        Sometime in 1619, the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista left the port city of São Paulo de Loanda in Portugal’s West Central African colony of Angola and sailed for Vera Cruz, New Spain (present-day Mexico). The captain, Manuel Mendes da Cunha, carried with him 350 African slaves, 200 of whom were part of an asiento, or contract, with a slave dealer in Seville. When da Cunha arrived at Vera Cruz on August 30, however, he delivered only 147 slaves, including, according to Spanish records, twenty-four African boys who he at some point sold in Jamaica. Those same records indicate that da Cunha had been robbed off the coast of Campeche (also in present-day Mexico) by “English corsairs,” or privateers.
        
        Those privateers were likely two ships. The White Lion sailed out of the port of Vlissingen (Flushing), Holland, and its captain, John Colyn Jope, bore a Dutch letter of marque, paperwork that allowed him, as a civilian, to attack and plunder Spanish ships. The English Treasurer also sailed out of Flushing and was partly owned by Virginia’s deputy governor, Samuel Argall. (In 1612, Argall had sailed the Treasurer on what at the time was the fastest-ever voyage from England to Virginia. In 1616, the ship delivered Pocahontas to England.) Its captain, Daniel Elfrith, also bore a letter of marque, his on the authority of Charles Emmanuel I, duke of Savoy, an independent duchy whose land has since been subsumed by present-day France and Italy. Working as a “consort,” the two ships attacked the São João Bautista late in July or early in August 1619 and apparently robbed da Cunha of about 50 of his African slaves. (A large portion of the ship’s Africans, perhaps as many as 150, probably died during the Atlantic crossing.)
        
        now the real problem is the definition os indentured and its usage.
        
        again indentured denotes a contract from both parties.
        
        many socalled indentured never signed any contracts.
        
        and lastly. a criminal case? think about murderers? they can today be sentenced to LIFE SERVITUDE in a prison. at the time of the early 1600’s. they did not have in the colonies prisons for life sentences. most were local gaols. temporary holding centers.
        thus they SOLD the servants. and thus the distinction between civil and criminal. most who today would have been sentenced to life back then were executed.
        
        so does that mean those today who committed criminal acts and sentenced to life are also slaves?
        
        the distinction between civil and criminal is that again civil denotes rights. criminal does not. thus changing the civil laws and denying people their God given right to Liberty.
        
        when one commits a crime so heinous, they can be removed from society for the safety of society. back then they only had executions . so please understand that distinguishment about civil rights as a human right vs a criminal being punished for crimes against others
      - BJA
        
        Angola has been a Christian country since King Afonso Mvemba Nzinga, son of King Nzinga Nkuwu, established Christianity as the national religion by 1520, and even in modern times there are fewer than 90,000 Mulsims in Angola.
        
        The difference between civil law and criminal law turns on the difference between two different objects which law seeks to pursue – redress or punishment. The object of civil law is the redress of wrongs by compelling compensation or restitution: the wrongdoer is not punished; he only suffers so much harm as is necessary to make good the wrong he has done. The person who has suffered gets a definite benefit from the law, or at least he avoids a loss. On the other hand, in the case of crimes, the main object of the law is to punish the wrongdoer; to give him and others a strong inducement not to commit same or similar crimes, to reform him if possible and perhaps to satisfy the public sense that wrongdoing ought to meet with retribution.
        
        William Geldart, Introduction to English Law 146 (D.C.M. Yardley ed., 9th ed. 1984
        
        Crimes are considered offenses against the state, or society as a whole. That means that even though one person might murder another person, murder itself is considered an offense to everyone in society.
        
        Criminal offenses and civil offenses are generally different in terms of their punishment. Criminal cases will have jail time as a potential punishment, whereas civil cases generally only result in monetary damages or orders to do or not do something. Note that a criminal case may involve both jail time and monetary punishments in the form of fines.
        
        No matter how you look at it, John Punch, not John Casor, was the first person declared a slave for life by a court of law.
        
        A slave by definition is “a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them including a lifetime of hereditary involuntary servitude.”
        
        An indentured servant is by definition “A person under contract to work for another person for a definite period of time, usually without pay but in exchange for free passage to a new country. During the seventeenth century most of the white laborers in Maryland and Virginia came from England as indentured servants.”
        
        There were lots of unfree people in the 17th century: serfs, servants, criminals, galley rowers, draftees, victims of impressment, and chattel slaves. Only slaves were subject to lifetime hereditary servitude, and this never happened to the Irish.
        
        Victor, “a Dutchman,” and James Gregory, “a Scotchman,” were each sentenced to be whipped, and four years were added to their indentures. The third servant, “a negro named John Punch,” was punished differently. Rather than take on additional years, he was made a slave for life.
        
        Tom Costa. Runaway Slaves and Servants in Colonial Virginia. Encyclopedia Virginia. 2011.
        
        A. Leon Higginbotham. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. Oxford University Press. 1980.
        
        W. T. M. Riches. “White Slaves, Black Servants and the Question of Providence: Servitude and Slavery in Colonial Virginia 1609-1705. Irish Journal of American Studies. 1999.
        
        Regardless of their country of origin, many early immigrants were indentured servants, people who sold their labor in exchange for passage to the New World and housing on their arrival. Initially, most laws passed concerned indentured servants, but around the middle of the seventeenth century, colonial laws began to reflect differences between indentured servants and slaves. More important, the laws began to differentiate between races: the association of “servitude for natural life” with people of African descent became common. Re Negro John Punch (1640) was one of the early cases that made a racial distinction among indentured servants. – United States Law Library of Congress.
        
        Three indentured servants—John Punch, James Gregory, and Victor —ran away and were recaptured. James Gregory and Victor, both white, were given “thirty stripes” and an additional four years of servitude, whereas John Punch, a Negro, was sentenced to serve the remainder of his life.
        
        Helen Tunnicliff Catterall, ed., Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, 5 vols. (1926; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1968; KF4545.S5 C3 1968), 1:77.
        
        John Punch ‘was ordered to serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural life’…Thus, John Punch’s name should go down in history as being the first official slave in the English colonies.”
        
        Rodeney D. Coates. Law and the Cultural Production of Race and Racialized Systems of Oppression. American Behavioral Scientist. 2003.
        
        In 1640, John Punch, a person of African descent, was sentenced to lifetime slavery in Virginia for running away with two bond slaves of European extraction. The latter were sentenced to ﬂogging. This can be interpreted as the ﬁrst legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake.”
        
        John Donoghue. Out of the Land of Bondage: The English Revolution and the Atlantic Origins of Abolition. The American Historical Review. 2010
        
        “The next year, 1640, the first definite indication of outright enslavement appears in Virginia…’the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere.’”
        
        Winthrop Jordan. White Over Black: American attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. University of North Carolina Press. 1968.
        
        These are just a portion of sources written by well reputed and established historians, lawyers, and sociologists with Ph. D’s in related fields.
      - usmcpgw
        
        while the king of Angola may have declared the nation a Christian nation. it does not refute that muslim lived there and were taken slave by Christians and vice versa
        
        Black’s law that all western laws are based on
        
        Civil cases usually involve private disputes between persons or organizations. Criminal cases involve an action that is considered to be harmful to society as a whole.
        
        Civil Cases A civil case begins when a person or entity (such as a corporation or the government), called the plaintiff, claims that another person or entity (the defendant) has failed to carry out a legal duty owed to the plaintiff. Both the plaintiff and the defendant are also referred to as “parties” or “litigants.” The plaintiff may ask the court to tell the defendant to fulfill the duty, or make compensation for the harm done, or both.
        
        Criminal Cases A person accused of a crime is generally charged in a formal accusation called an indictment (for felonies or serious crimes) or information (for misdemeanors). The government, on behalf of the people of the United States, prosecutes the case through the United States Attorney’s Office if the person is charged with a federal crime. A state’s attorney’s office prosecutes state crimes.
        now can you show me the contracts from the Irish? many were prisoners of the Crown. kept in prisons overfilled and starving.
        
        the same for the Angolans? where is the records of their contract?
        
        again they were taken at sea while on their way in a Spanish ship to the new world. when they could not be sold for indentureship, they were bought at Jamestown for food. they had a time period and under the laws of the times. were to be set free.
        
        Punch’s case while being a runaway was also involved in that he sired a child with a white woman. which was against the laws. ( not right, but those were the times)
        
        notice carefully that even every source either of us referenced show they were indentured. yes the whites in the one case were not sentenced to life servitude. but at the time they were all indentured. question, did any of them sign a contract? without a contract? they were essentially slaves. so how does one who is indentured and one without a contract, still serve the same time periods and get the lands rewarded afterwards?
        
        the usage of the word SERVANT is on the documents of history.
        
        sorry. but comparing a civil punishment to a criminal one is not the same.
      - usmcpgw
        
        as an aside. I have had PHD professor’s who pused their ideologies while claiming not to. not saying these you referenced did. but without knowing them personally?
        
        I take with a grain of salt those I do not know personally. many have been refuted as time passed. so as to established? that is I the world of academia.
        
        example, many established academics are pushing “studies” that Christ was a homosexual. they are established. they make a good argument. but they have no physical proof.
        
        did you know that the Ten Commandments were written in ancient Hebrew? and when the Greeks first translated. they did not know the word for murder in Hebrew. while the Torah and Bble speak of killing. the distinguishment between killing and murder was never clarified for the Greeks. why does the Torah and Bible speak of killing enemies….. then the Ten commandments would say killing is a sin?
        
        because ( I cannot translate here) the original in Hebrew was about murder
        
        The argument is often made in various applications of “You shall not kill” that this Commandment is really a specific prohibition of murder. This evokes a range of connotations for the English word murder with a primary emphasis on unlawful killing, the premeditated and deliberate killing of another human being. This would be opposed to other forms of killing, which are them presumably legal or acceptable such as execution, war, or self defense. Appeal is usually made to the original Hebrew by arguing that the word used, ratsach, does not mean killing in general but refers specifically to murder. This view seems to be supported in some modern translations, such as the NRSV (a change from the original RSV):
        
        Exod 20:13 You shall not murder.
        Deut 5:17 You shall not murder.
        
        However a close examination of the Hebrew word used here raises questions about this translation, or at least the rationale for using the word alone to distinguish between various kinds of killing such as murder, manslaughter, or justifiable homicide. The Hebrew word used in both versions of the Ten Words (Commandments), ratsach, is not nearly as specific as the English word “murder” and has a much wider range of meaning.
        
        For example, in the Priestly Code of Numbers, the word is used twice (35:27, 30) for killing done by the blood avenger, which was considered “legal” in Israelite society. Also, there are several places in Deuteronomy (4:41-42, 19:3-6) as well as 15 or so other passages scattered throughout Numbers and Joshua that use the word to refer to unintentional killing or causing accidental death, what in English we call, manslaughter (Num 35:6-31, Josh 20:3-5). While the English language uses different terms with different nuances to distinguish different types of killing, the same word in Hebrew can refer to all without distinction in the word itself. The term ratsach can have the connotation of “murder” or “assassinate” (Jud 20:4, 1 Kings 21:19, 2 Kings 6:32). However, that meaning is usually determined by clear markers in context. The term can also mean something much milder, “to beat” or “to assault” (Psalm 62:3). A cognate noun in Psalm 42:10 (Heb. 42:11) means “shattering” or “mortal wound,” while the same cognate noun in Ezekiel 21:22 refers to the slaughter of a battle. These related meanings suggest that the basic word connotes violence
        
        sorry to go off topic. but remember established academics themselves have been on both sides of this. both have put out books. which one is correct?
        
        thus I will research for myself. I will use their sources and cross reference them but o will also use sources they do not use..
        thanks for those sources. will ook them up
      - usmcpgw
        
        as an aside. I have had PHD professor’s who pused their ideologies while claiming not to. not saying these you referenced did. but without knowing them personally?
        
        I take with a grain of salt those I do not know personally. many have been refuted as time passed. so as to established? that is I the world of academia.
        
        example, many established academics are pushing “studies” that Christ was a homosexual. they are established. they make a good argument. but they have no physical proof.
        
        did you know that the Ten Commandments were written in ancient Hebrew? and when the Greeks first translated. they did not know the word for murder in Hebrew. while the Torah and Bble speak of killing. the distinguishment between killing and murder was never clarified for the Greeks. why does the Torah and Bible speak of killing enemies….. then the Ten commandments would say killing is a sin?
        
        because ( I cannot translate here) the original in Hebrew was about murder
        
        The argument is often made in various applications of “You shall not kill” that this Commandment is really a specific prohibition of murder. This evokes a range of connotations for the English word murder with a primary emphasis on unlawful killing, the premeditated and deliberate killing of another human being. This would be opposed to other forms of killing, which are them presumably legal or acceptable such as execution, war, or self defense. Appeal is usually made to the original Hebrew by arguing that the word used, ratsach, does not mean killing in general but refers specifically to murder. This view seems to be supported in some modern translations, such as the NRSV (a change from the original RSV):
        
        Exod 20:13 You shall not murder.
        Deut 5:17 You shall not murder.
        
        However a close examination of the Hebrew word used here raises questions about this translation, or at least the rationale for using the word alone to distinguish between various kinds of killing such as murder, manslaughter, or justifiable homicide. The Hebrew word used in both versions of the Ten Words (Commandments), ratsach, is not nearly as specific as the English word “murder” and has a much wider range of meaning.
        
        For example, in the Priestly Code of Numbers, the word is used twice (35:27, 30) for killing done by the blood avenger, which was considered “legal” in Israelite society. Also, there are several places in Deuteronomy (4:41-42, 19:3-6) as well as 15 or so other passages scattered throughout Numbers and Joshua that use the word to refer to unintentional killing or causing accidental death, what in English we call, manslaughter (Num 35:6-31, Josh 20:3-5). While the English language uses different terms with different nuances to distinguish different types of killing, the same word in Hebrew can refer to all without distinction in the word itself. The term ratsach can have the connotation of “murder” or “assassinate” (Jud 20:4, 1 Kings 21:19, 2 Kings 6:32). However, that meaning is usually determined by clear markers in context. The term can also mean something much milder, “to beat” or “to assault” (Psalm 62:3). A cognate noun in Psalm 42:10 (Heb. 42:11) means “shattering” or “mortal wound,” while the same cognate noun in Ezekiel 21:22 refers to the slaughter of a battle. These related meanings suggest that the basic word connotes violence
        
        sorry to go off topic. but remember established academics themselves have been on both sides of this. both have put out books. which one is correct?
        
        thus I will research for myself. I will use their sources and cross reference them but o will also use sources they do not use..
        thanks for those sources. will ook them up
        
        Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became well known for urging stressed-out students competing for elite colleges to calm down and stop trying to be perfect. Yesterday she admitted that she had fabricated her own educational credentials, and resigned after nearly three decades at M.I.T. Officials of the institute said she did not have even an undergraduate degree.
      - Tionia
        
        Just because you know someone personally means what they claim is correct? SERIOUSLY? Not saying the people you know are lying but people do make mistakes and sometimes when they get “facts” they get the wrong ones…
      - jaw444
        
        thanks for the detailed well documented, thus well defended, historical analysis. I also appreciate the informed comments others have taken the time to argue here, good discussion.
      - BJA
        
        But that’s interesting about the virginia archives, I’ll have to send them an email about that since out of all of the history books, scholars, historians, and every other article, archive or book I have ever read, this is the first time I have heard about this. There is however, after doing more research, still a huge debate amongst historians and scholars as to whether or not the first 20 were slaves or indentured. kind of odd none of them have ever mentioned this. In the mean time I will note this in the article.
        
        Of course it still doesn’t change the fact that the first slave owner in America wasn’t a black man.
      - usmcpgw
        
        many things people have never “heard” of. does not mean they don’t exist
        
        names of these scholars? historians? boks?
        
        anyone can write a book. especially centuries after the fact.
        
        and yes the debate continues. but according to documents… they were sold as “servants”
        
        of course this doesn’t change the fact that under the definition of slavery vs indentured servant….. that ues the first slave owner was a blackman.
        
        in truth. all that is irrelevant and distracts from today. insead of learning from others mistakes…. everyone is looking for excuse. someone else to blame. this nation and society has mutatedfrom personal responsibility inot a society of entitlement whiners. people who onstead of living life. look for someone or something to blame for their lack of success
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Nope he was not and even still white people continue to benefit from slavery not black ppl.. And the truth out there start with hidden colors… And you can research the sources listed
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        The generations of whites who still own their wealth from slavery, benefit from slavery. The rest of us don’t benefit from slavery. We benefit from being white in a white nation.You can’t have two nations under 1 nation. Until you negroes learn that, you’re a lost fucking cause.
      - usmcpgw
        
        books written centuries later depends on whom is writing the books. what sources they used and if they allow any personal bias
        
        historians and scholars are also subject to the sources nd their personal biases
        
        yes the debate still rages and until everyone agrees to the definition of slavery and indentured servants….. it will continue to rage.
        
        you can go back to before BC and find records of slavery. in manyu African nations they had slaves as bodyguards, statesmen and soldiers.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        What
      - JoeBeach
        
        I would suspect that the first slave owner in America (the landmass now known as North America) was a Native American holding other Native Americans as slaves as it was customary for battles between warring tribes for the victors to enslave some of their losing opponents.
      - Eve Bellini
        
        Just like the King of Africa kept his own people as slaves.
      - Say It Aint So
        
        King of africa? Lol, what? Bitch, africa is a continent, not one big ass country
      - Eve Bellini
        
        There were Kings in Africa in 1600’s and slave traders in Africa. Read history.
      - Say It Aint So
        
        Bitch, you said the KING OF AFRICA
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Exactly why are we debating ppl who don’t even know never mind 😂😂😂
      - A Nightmare On Any Street
        
        lmao exactly
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Right but read what you wrote 😂😂😂FYI the debate isn’t about slavery that always existed it’s about chattel slavery
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Exactly
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        King of Africa ok I can’t even debate you 😂😂😩😩
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        What 😂😂😂
      - Eve Bellini
        
        The rich “white” people wanted to keep it out of history books because they wanted to keep people separated. Irish were slaves. There are a lot of books and papers about it. Slavery only had one color. Green.
      - William Dean Luke
        
        Gold, actually.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Right gold… And yes they divided people but gave the Irish indentured servants some benefits not much
      - ToeUp FromTheFlowUp
        
        Do you have any clue who runs the world? Who writes the history books? Who owns the banks? Who pushes the cultural Marxist fueled progressive agenda? Of course you don’t. But CNN is facts too right? Fuxking clown.
      - GW Sedberry Jr.
        
        Facts are fluid, Toe. You know that. The victor is the one who usually writes history.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Exactly
      - Robert Jones
        
        I’ve seen this picture before. Unless you’re an Ardedoe from NY, that isn’t your picture.
      - usmcpgw
        
        what picture??? are you talking about my 1981 bootcamp photo????? well if so… i call you a liar. i can prove it. simply come on down to where i live. what about it Robert Jones?
        
        PS,, where is your photo????? and as to NY???? shithole fuyll of libtards
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        😂😂😂 try again
      - usmcpgw
        
        H.R. McILwaine’s MINUTES OF THE COUNCIL AND GENERAL COURT OF COLONIAL VIRGINIA, 1622-1632, 1670-1676 (Library of VA, 2nd ed. 1979)
        
        WHEREAS some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any christian shall committ ffornication with a Negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the ffines imposed by the former act
        
        and lastly. these were colonies and the European powers. and as such. not the United States of America.
      - usmcpgw
        
        Researchers have concluded that he likely fathered a child with a white woman. That child, John Bunch, was born in 1637. In 1640, Punch ran away with two other (white) indentured servants. All three were caught in Maryland. The two white men were sentenced to an additional four years to their servitude; Punch was sentenced to a lifetime.
        
        Miscegenation laws, forbidding marriage between races, were prevalent in the South and the West. Because English masters had had little regard for indentured servants of non-Anglo ethnic groups, they allowed and sometimes encouraged commingling of their servants. Being seen in public or bringing legitimacy to these relations, however, was not lawful. This is evinced by a court decision from 1630, the first court decision in which a Negro woman and a white man figured prominently. Re Davis (1630) concerned sexual relations between them, the decision stating, “Hugh Davis to be soundly whipt . . . for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christianity by defiling his body in lying with a Negro, which fault he is to actk. next sabbath day.”
        
        Another section of the law closed the loophole created by the 1662 birthright law, which mandated that children born of a free white mother and Negro father were technically free. This amendment stated that a free white woman who had a bastard child by a Negro or mulatto man had to pay fifteen pounds sterling within one month of the birth. If she could not pay, she would become an indentured servant for five years. Whether or not the fine was paid, however, the child would be bound in service for thirty years.
      - dkt1
        
        Punch was an indentured servant, and his papers are in the archives, so the research is flawed.
      - usmcpgw
        
        The White Lion and the Treasurer immediately set sail for Virginia, where they hoped to sell their cargo. According to a letter written by the colony’s secretary, John Rolfe, to the Virginia Company of London treasurer, Sir Edwin Sandys, the White Lion arrived first and landed at Point Comfort sometime late in August, having lost its “consort shipp” on the passage from the West Indies. Rolfe mistakenly described the ship as a “Dutch man of Warr,” perhaps because it bore a Dutch letter of marque. “He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes,” Rolfe wrote, which the governor, Argall’s successor Sir George Yeardley, and the cape merchant, Abraham Peirsey, “bought for victualle [food] … at the best and easyest rate they could.” Some (or perhaps all) of the Africans were then transported to Jamestown and sold.
        
        The Treasurer arrived at Point Comfort three or four days later carrying between twenty-five and twenty-nine additional slaves. Although he apparently managed to sell some of his slaves, Captain Elfrith found that the residents of Kecoughtan (present-day Hampton) refused to sell supplies to him or his crew, perhaps because port officials knew that his letter of marque from the duke of Savoy was no longer valid. The duke had made peace with Spain, which meant that Captain Elfrith now could be accused of piracy, a legal complication the Virginia merchants may have wanted to avoid. Elfrith might have heard that Governor Yeardley had sent Secretary Rolfe, Lieutenant William Peirce, and a Mr. Ewens (probably William Ewens) to meet the Treasurer, and decided that he had better leave. Whatever the case, he was gone by the time the Virginia men arrived.The Summer Ils.
        
        Elfrith sailed to the English colony at Bermuda, where, for 50,000 ears of corn, he sold fourteen of his Africans to acting governor Miles Kendall and his successor, Nathaniel Butler. Butler later told a superior that if not for the Africans, he would not have been able “to rayse one pound of Tobacco this year” to generate revenue. He added that “Thes[e] Slaves are the most proper and cheape instruments for this plantation.”
      - usmcpgw
        
        question,
        
        on this webpage. there is an icon from top to bottom in the middle of the page. it has symbols for like tweet and other things. scrolling over it only gives the option to click on one of the icons and not remove the entire obstacle. as I am not computer savy……. do you know of this and how to remove the obstacle? it is approximately an inch wide and three inches long. and right in the middle of the page
        
        appreciation for any help you can offer
      - dkt1
        
        He did keep him as a slave.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        What 😂😂😂😂ok if that makes you feel better about what happen to black people in America 🙄
      - IndependenceIsNotFree
        
        This is the type of revisionist history that causes people to remain ignorant. Just look at your Virginia slave code quote, this is not even the entire quote. Stop it, stop trying to rewrite history with this nonsense. Stop living in denial. Please cite your sources.
      - Dave Suchy
        
        no they came as indentured servants, not slaves.
      - Eve Bellini
        
        Prove it. My ancestors were Irish SLAVES.
      - Toni Raska Sams
        
        They were indentured servants. I am Irish, born and raised in Dublin.
      - ToeUp FromTheFlowUp
        
        No they were not. They worked along side africans leaves and were valued less than African slaves. In fact they would stand down in the ships hulls and the Africans would stand on the docks… It was more dangerous in the hulls. You people are clueless. A bunch of liberals who will say anything to keep the narrative alive.
      - Ron Lawton
        
        I would love to change my opinion. What are your sources?
      - Bobby English
        
        YO RONNY,
        Take your finger & Google:
        
        WHITE SLAVERY IN AMERICA – THE BLACK IRISH OF BERMUDA-
        
        & LEARN
      - Kevin Waziki
        
        It’s such a huge myth, conflated with indentured servitude, which the Irish were sentenced (as criminals) to come to the Americans, and some came voluntarily, and this MYTH has gained steam thanks to stromfront and other white supremacist websites who are perpetuating this nonsense utter garbage to the MSM. There are no documented facts that have or will support this huge, and i’ll say it again, conflation of the term indentured servitude. Anyone claiming this — again, only on social media, for there are no historians worth their salt — is claiming this under the fiction section at your local bookstore or library.
      - nicolu
        
        @kevin, you’re a special kind of stupid aren’t you??
      - BHill
        
        You errantly call it ‘supremacy’ as a way to smear the message, coming from a messenger that offers it. But one cant sugar coat the truth. Voluntary slaves? Youre a complete Idiot. My heavens, the word slave itself comes from SLAV!!
        
        ”The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
        
        Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
        
        From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
        
        During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder.
        In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
        
        Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
        
        As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
        
        African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.
        
        The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce.
        Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
        
        In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.
        
        This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.”
        In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
        
        England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia.
        
        There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
        
        There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry.
        In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end it’s participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves.
        While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
        
        But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
        Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories. But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed? Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer?
        
        Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened. None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.’
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        No one claimed that slavery was only a black thing or that being treated like shit by white people was purely a black thing. They claimed that the two situations they were put into were not the same. With one clearly being worse.
        
        I’d respond to the bottom half but it’s something you and the Arthur don’t actually care about. That’s actually proven by the line “where are our public and private schools”. Those weren’t things given to blacks because of slavery they were allowed because after slavery even up to 50 years ago blacks weren’t allowed to got to white public or private schools but the irish could.
      - James Kerwin
        
        Hey quick question. If you were illegally arrested by some other country for a crime you never committed, sold to some random country into “indentured servituded”, and generations later your descendants never actually were told of yours and your people’s suffering, and your descendants were all told that you were nothing more than a criminal. How would you feel?
      - MetalQuintessence
        
        So just replacing the word changes everything?
        
        “It’s such a huge myth, conflated with indentured servitude, which the Irish were sentenced (as criminals) to come to the Americans, and some came voluntarily, and this MYTH has gained steam thanks to stromfront and other white supremacist websites who are perpetuating this nonsense utter garbage to the MSM.”
        
        I’ve seen many black authors of articles that stated that there was no black on black slavery and that they didn’t sold their ppl. They were selling “criminals”, which albeit black too, were not their “people”. They even went even further by stating that they made them a favor by selling them into slavery, as they otherwise would have to kill them.
        
        You know how easy it is to label s/o a criminal when you hold the power, if not you can go and learn some history.
        
        How about explaining how this is any different from slavery:
        “Runaways were sought out and returned. About half of the white immigrants to the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries were indentured. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, children from England and France were kidnapped and sold into indentured labor in the Caribbean for a minimum of five years, but usually their contracts were bought and sold repeatedly and some laborers never obtained their freedom.”
        
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant
      - Susie Thompson
        
        Your ignorance of recorded facts is astounding. I guess denial makes it easier for haters to keep on hating and playing the victim card ad infinitum. PLEASE WISE UP. SLAVERY HAS NO COLOR AND STILL GOES ON TODAY.
      - Susie Thompson
        
        There was also the SCOTS RED LEGS OF BARBADOS. Yes there may have been Irish as well because BOTH were hard oppressed by the English and others. SMT!
      - Buddy Silver
        
        THE IRISH HOLOCAUST
        
        5.26 MILLIONS STARVED TO DEATH BY THE BRITISH
        
        Never, ever, forget it!
        
        Learn its British HQ town. As no Jewish person would ever refer to the “Jewish Oxygen Famine of 1939 – 1945”, so no Irish person ought ever refer to the Irish Holocaust as a famine.
        
        Is Britain’s cover-up of its 1845-1850 Holocaust in Ireland the most successful Big Lie in all of history?
        
        The cover-up is accomplished by the same British terrorism and bribery that perpetrated the genocide. Consider: why did former Irish President Mary Robinson call it “Ireland’s greatest natural disaster” while she concealed the British army’s role? Potato blight, “phytophthora infestans”, did spread from
        America to Europe in 1844, to England and then Ireland in 1845 but it didn’t
        cause famine anywhere.
        
        Ireland did not starve for potatoes; it starved for food.
        
        Ireland starved because its food, from 40 to 70 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint by 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia, battleships, excise vessels, Coast Guard and by 200,000 British soldiers (100,000 at any given moment). The attached map shows the never-before-published names and locations in Ireland of the food removal regiments (Disposition of the Army; Public Record Office, London; et al, of which we possess photocopies). Thus, Britain seized from Ireland’s producers tens of millions of head of livestock; tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry & dairy products; enough to sustain 18 million
        persons.
        
        The Public Record Office recently informed us that their British regiments’ Daily Activity Reports of 1845-1850 have “gone missing.” Those records include each regiment’s cattle drives and grain-cart convoys it escorted at gun-point from the Irish districts assigned to it. Also “missing” are the receipts issued by the British army commissariat officers in every Irish port tallying the cattle and tonnage of foodstuff removed; likewise the export lading manifests. Other records provide all-revealing glimpses of the “missing” data; such as: …
        From Cork harbor on one day in 1847 2 the AJAX steamed for England with 1,514 firkins of butter, 102 casks of pork, 44 hogsheads of whiskey, 844 sacks of oats, 247 sacks of wheat, 106 bales of bacon, 13 casks of hams, 145 casks of porter, 12 sacks of fodder, 28 bales of feathers, 8 sacks of lard, 296 boxes of eggs, 30 head of cattle, 90 pigs, 220 lambs, 34 calves and 69 miscellaneous packages. On November 14, 1848 3, sailed, from Cork harbor alone: 147 bales of bacon, 120 casks and 135 barrels of pork, 5 casks of hams, 149 casks of miscellaneous provisions (foodstuff); 1,996 sacks & 950 barrels of oats; 300 bags of flour; 300 head of cattle; 239 sheep; 9,398 firkins of butter; 542 boxes of eggs. On July 28, 1848 4; a typical day’s food shipments from only the following four ports: from Limerick: the ANN, JOHN GUISE and MESSENGER for London; the PELTON CLINTON for Liverpool; and the CITY OF LIMERICK, BRITISH QUEEN, and CAMBRIAN MAID for Glasgow. This one-day removal of Limerick’s food was of 863 firkins of butter; 212 firkins, 1,198 casks and 200 kegs of lard, 87 casks of ham; 267 bales of bacon; 52 barrels of pork; 45 tons and 628 barrels of flour; 4,975 barrels of oats and 1,000 barrels of barley. From Kilrush: the ELLEN for Bristol; the CHARLES G. FRYER and MARY ELLIOTT for London. This
        one-day removal was of 550 tons of County Clare’s oats and 15 tons of its
        barley. From Tralee: the JOHN ST. BARBE, CLAUDIA and QUEEN for London; the SPOKESMAN for Liverpool. This one-day removal was of 711 tons of Kerry’s oats and 118 tons of its barley. From Galway: the MARY, VICTORIA, and DILIGENCE for London; the SWAN and UNION for Limerick (probably for trans-shipment to England). This one-day removal was of 60 sacks of Co. Galway’s flour; 30 sacks and 292 tons of its oatmeal; 294 tons of its oats; and 140 tons of its miscellaneous provisions (foodstuffs). British soldiers forcibly removed it from its starving Limerick, Clare, Kerry and Galway producers.
        
        In Belmullet, Co. Mayo the mission of 151 soldiers 5 of the 49th Regiment, in addition to escorting livestock and crops to the port for export, was to guard a few tons of stored meal from the hands of the starving; its population falling from 237 to 105 between 1841 and 1851. Belmullet also lost its source of fish in January, 1849, when Britain’s Coast Guard arrested its fleet of enterprising
        fishermen ten miles at sea in the act of off-loading flour from a passing ship.
        They were sentenced to prison and their currachs were confiscated.
        
        The Waterford Harbor British army commissariat officer wrote to British Treasury Chief Charles Trevelyan on April 24, 1846;
        
        “The barges leave Clonmel once a week for this place, with the export supplies under convoy which, last Tuesday, consisted of 2 guns, 50 cavalry, and 80 infantry escorting them on the banks of the Suir as far as Carrick.”
        
        While its people starved, the Clonmel district exported annually, along with its other farm produce, approximately 60,000 pigs in the form of cured pork. …
        
        There were many “Voices in the Wilderness” risking all to stop the genocide. For example; Wexford-born Jane Wilde, mother of Oscar and poetess, wrote under the nom de plume “Speranza,” in the United Irishman newspaper the
        following (verses 1 and 6 printed here) during the depths of 1847 re the
        British genocidists and the innocents they were exterminating:
        
        THE FAMINE YEAR
        Weary men, what reap ye? “Golden corn for the Stranger.”
        What sow ye? “Human corpses that
        await for the Avenger.”
        Fainting forms, all hunger-stricken,
        what see you in the offing?
        
        “Stately ships to bear our food
        away amid the stranger’s scoffing.”
        
        There’s a proud array of soldiers what
        do they round your door?
        
        “They guard our masters’
        granaries from the thin hands of the poor.”
        
        Pale mothers, wherefore weeping?
        “Would to God that we were dead”
        
        Our children swoon before us, and we
        cannot give them bread!”
        
        “We are wretches, famished,
        scorned, human tools to build your pride,
        
        But God will yet take vengeance for
        the souls for whom Christ died.
        
        Now is your hour of pleasure, bask ye
        in the world’s caress;
        
        But our whitening bones against ye
        will arise as witnesses,
        
        From the cabins and the ditches, in
        their charred, uncoffined masses,
        
        For the Angel of the Trumpet will know
        them as he passes.
        
        A ghastly, spectral army before God
        we’ll stand
        
        And arraign ye as our murderers, O
        spoilers of our land!”
        
        Mrs. Wilde evidently knew that British arms controlled every field of Ireland. Small detachments resided as far away as 40 miles from their garrisons shown on the map. The absence of army garrisons in Co. Derry, etc., indicates that its royalist militia adequately reinforced its constabulary. Bayonets, cannons, rifles, the lash, eviction and the gallows were freely used to seize Irish food (on the pretext that it was “the property” of some English
        “owner”-by-robbery; nearly all of whom were absentees). But Wilde
        couldn’t have known each regiment’s identity. We discovered them in the Public Record Office, Kew Gardens, London in 1983 while researching material for my paternal grandfather’s biography. It was just as available to Irish government-subsidized authors and academicians. Their Big Lie campaign is shocking.
      - Bobby English
        
        100% COORECT!
      - Bobby English
        
        JAKE THE RAKE,
        
        You are an IGNORAMUS!
      - GWS Jr.
        
        My people arrived in the 1660’s from Ireland and we’re not granted freedom until 1733, North Carolina. Indentured servants is a pretty little name, isn’t it? So politically correct back then. I guess that explains why so many Irish were relegated to shit work in the fields and black women were the preferred domestic staff as they were considered “cleaner.” The phrase “Why are you treating us like the Irish” in many historical texts sums it up quite well what it meant to be an “indentured servant.” I do love it when a non-American (or at least non-native) offers to correct someone’s geneology of his family’s journey in America. I wouldn’t be so bold to offer insight into the IRA conflict in Northern Belfast when I spent 3 weeks there in 1988. Seems a bit arrogant of me to do so.
      - Kevin Waziki
        
        absolute nonsense. stop playing the victim card. your people that came here came here as common criminals, not slaves. It’s hilarious that no historians from academia have come out to document this. I wonder why lol.
      - GWS Jr.
        
        First off, that’s like me saying you people were too dumb to elude your own brethren who caught and enslaved you. And you still haven’t evolved because I’m having trouble naming 2 historically black countries with a consistently successful government. Liberia and Monrovia did it for a long while, but they slaughter their own now, too.
        
        No historians have come out to document your opinion? Imagine that. To call them all criminals is like saying all the slaves were baboons. Stupid and idiotic.
      - Yardiebwoy
        
        So forced to face facts you decided to show you true self? A racist idiot.
      - BigG1971
        
        Huh? Face what facts? Your distorted narrative cherry picked to bolster your weak argument? Down to name calling, too. All that’s left to do is start repeating yourself over and over getting louder each time..never understood that behavior in a discussion. Guess it’s a cultural thing.
      - Yardiebwoy
        
        Well you have to call a spade a spade. Here you are 2 months later chiming in with nothing substantial to offer. Maybe it’s time to head back under your rock.
      - Charles Wesley
        
        Exactly, what died he say that was “racist”?
        Sheesh… methinks you need to read more slowly..
      - Yardiebwoy
        
        Maybe if you remove your nose from his neither regions long enough to catch a breath, you would understand what he said was ignorant and racist.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Huh you having trouble naming to black countries wait what it’s called European colonism…. That’s why your having and issues l🤔And Irish slaves nope indentured servants with benefits many plantation overseers
      - BigG1971
        
        No, you avoided my question. Plenty of black governed countries throughout history on the African continent. Name one successful country over a significant period of time.
      - Likeaboss5656
        
        Aksum, Ethiopia, Kush, Mali, Songhai. All of which had higher standards of living than most of Europe during their respective lifespans.
      - BHill
        
        Common criminals whose crime was failing to pay ‘rent’ to an absentee English (nee Jewish) landlord, or proper interest on a loan given for a crop!
        
        You worthless Shill liar….
        
        ‘African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.
        
        The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce.
        Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
        
        In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.
        
        This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.”
        In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        I agree many of there crimes where petty but slaves nope indentured servants read the slaves codes/laws…
      - Bobby English
        
        SUCK IT, SUCHY,
        
        IMPOSITION OF WHITE IRISH SLAVERY
        
        In the Midrash Rabbah, a rabbinical commentary, there is a prediction one day all gentiles will be slaves of Jews. [1]
        
        In the British West Indies much of the early capital to finance White Slavery came from Sephardic Jews from Holland. They provided credit, machinery and shipping facilities. In the 1630s Dutch Jews had been deeply involved in the enslavement of the Irish, financing their transport to slave plantations in the tropics. By the 1660s, this combination of Zionist finance and White Slave labor made the British island colony of Barbados the richest in the empire. The island’s value, in terms of trade and capital exceeded that of all other British colonies combined. [2]
        
        Of the fact that the wealth of Barbados was founded on the backs of White Slave labor there can be no doubt. White
        Slave laborers from Britain and Ireland were the mainstay of the sugar colony. Until the mid‑1640s there were almost no Blacks in Barbados.
        
        George Downing wrote to John Winthrop, the colonial governor of Massachusetts in 1645, that planters who
        wanted to make a fortune in the British West Indies must procure White Slave labor “out of England” if they wanted to succeed. [3]
        
        From their experience with rebellious Irish slaves, Dutch Jews would eventually be instrumental in the switch from
        White to Black slavery in the British West Indies.
        
        Blacks were more docile, and more profitable. The English traffic in slaves in the first half of the seventeenth
        century was solely in White slaves. The English had no slave base in West Africa, as did the Dutch Sephardim who were not only bankers and shipping magnates but slave masters and plantation owners themselves. Jews were forbidden by English law to own White Protestant slaves although in practice this was not uniformly enforced, Irish slaves were allowed to the Jewish slavers but were regarded by them as intractable. Hence certain Jews
        became prime movers behind the African slave trade and the importation of Negro slaves into the New World. [4]
        
        White Slavery was the historic base upon which Negro slavery was constructed.
        
        “…the important structures, labor ideologies and social relations necessary for slavery already had been established within indentured servitude…White Servitude…in many ways came remarkably close to the ‘ideal type’ of chattel slavery which later became associated with the African experience.” [5]
        
        And:
        
        “The practice developed and tolerated in the kidnapping of Whites laid the foundation for the kidnapping of Negroes.” [6]
        
        The official papers of the White Slave trade refer to adult White Slaves as “freight” and White Child Slaves were termed “half‑ freight.” Like any other commodity on the shipping inventories, WHITE HUMAN BEINGS WERE SEEN
        STRICTLY IN TERMS OF MARKET ECONOMICS BY MERCHANTS.
        
        The American colonies prospered through the use of White Slaves which Virginia planter John Pory declared in 1619 were “our principal wealth.”
        
        “The White Servant, a semi‑slave, was more important in the 17th century than even the Negro slave, in respect IN BOTH NUMBERS and economic significance.” [7]
        
        Where Establishment history books or films touch on White Slavery it is referred to with the deceptively mild‑sounding title of “indentured servitude,”
        
        The implication being that the Enslavement of Whites was not as terrible or all- encompassing as Negro “SLAVERY” but constituted instead a more benign bondage, that of “SERVITUDE.”
        
        Yet the terms servant and slave were often used interchangeably to refer to people whose status was clearly that of permanent, lifetime enslavement. “An Account of the English Sugar Plantations” in the British
        Museum [8] written circa 1660‑1685 refers to Black and White Slaves as
        
        “servants…the Colonyes were plentifully supplied with Negro and Christian {White} servants which are the nerves and sinews of a plantacon…” (Christian was a euphemism for White)…In the North American colonies in the 17th
        and 18th centuries and subsequently in the United States, servant was the usual designation for a slave.” [9]
        
        The use of the word servant to describe a slave would have been very prevalent among a Bible‑literate people
        like colonial Americans.
        
        In all English translations of the Bible available at the time, from Wycliffe’s to the 1611 King James version, the word slave as it appeared in the original Biblical languages was translated as servant. For example, the King James Version of Genesis 9:25 is rendered:
        
        “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be.”
        
        The intended meaning here is clearly that of slave and there is little doubt that in the mind of early Americans the
        word servant was synonymous with slave. [10]
        In original documents of the White merchants who transported negroes from Africa the Blacks were called servants:
        
        “…one notes that the Company of Royal Adventurers referred to their cargo as ‘egers,’ ‘Negro‑Servants,’ ‘Servants…from Africa…” [11]
        
        Oscar Handlin, Professor of History at Harvard University, debunks the propaganda that slavery was strictly a
        racist operation, part of a conspiracy of White Supremacy. Prof. Handlin points to the facts that:
        
        (1). Whites as well as Blacks were enslaved.
        
        (2). In the 17th century slaves of both races were called servants.
        
        ( 3). The colonial merchants of 17th century America
        had no qualms about enslaving their own White kindred:
        
        “Through the first three‑quarters of the 17th century, the Negroes, even in the South, were not numerous…They came into a society in which a large part of the (White) population was to some degree unfree…The Negroes lack of freedom was not unusual. These (Black) newcomers, like so many others, were accepted, bought and held, as kinds of servants…It was in this sense that Negro servants were sometimes called slaves …For that matter, it also applied to White Englishmen…in New England and New York too there had early been an intense desire for cheap unfree hands, for ‘bond slavery, villeinage of Captivity,’ whether it be White, Negro or Indian…” [12]
        
        A survey of the various ad hoc codes and regulations devised in the 17th century for the governing of those in
        bondage reveals no special category for Black slaves. [13]
        
        “During Ligon’s time in Barbados (1647‑1650), White indentured female servants worked in the field gangs alongside the small but rapidly growing number of enslaved black women. In this formative stage of the Sugar Revolution, planters did notattempt to formulate a division of labor along racial lines. White indenturedservants…were not perceived by their masters as worthy of special treatmentin the labor regime.” [14]
        
        The contemporary academic consensus on slavery in America represents history by retroactive fiat, decreeing that conclusions about theentire epoch fit the characterizations of its final stage, the 19th century
        Southern plantation system.
        
        Prof. Handlin informs us that legislators in Virginia
        sought to cover‑up the record of White bondage and its equivalence to Negro servitude:
        
        “The compiler of the Virginia laws (codifying Black slavery for the first time) then takes the liberty of altering texts to bring earlier legislation into line with his own new notions.” [15]
        
        For Examples of alteratings to insert the word slave as a reference to Blacks in Virginia when it had not been used to describe them that way before, see Hening, Vol. 2, pp. iii, 170, 283, 490. What was later lawmakers sought to cover‑up?
        
        The fact that the White ruling class of Colonial America had cast their own White People into the same condition as the Blacks, or even worse. Richard Ligon’s eyewitness report of a White Slave revolt in Barbados in 1649 has been consistently referred down through the years as a rebellion of Negro Slaves by at least a dozen later historians such as Poyer, Oldmixon, Schomburgh et al.
        
        In their cases this does not seem to have been a matter of deliberate falsification, but rather a complete inability
        to conceive of Whites as Slaves. Ligon had written that the rebels in question had not been able to “endure such slavery” any longer and the later historians automatically assumed that this had to have been a reference to Negroes.
        
        IT IS THIS PERSISTENT COGNITION BY CATEGORICAL
        PRECONCEPTION THAT RENDERS MUCH OF WHAT PASSES FOR COLONIAL HISTORY IN OUR ERA
        INACCURATE AND MISLEADING.
        
        17th century colonial slavery and 19th century American slavery are not a seamless garment. Historians who
        pretend otherwise have to maintain several fallacies, the chief among these being the supposition that when White “servants” constituted the majority of servile laborers in the colonial period, they worked in privileged or even luxurious conditions which were forbidden to Blacks.
        
        In truth,
        
        WHITE SLAVES WERE OFTEN RESTRICTED TO DOING THE DIRTY, BACKBREAKING FIELD WORK WHILE BLACKS AND EVEN INDIANS WERE TAKEN INTO THE PLANTATION MANSION HOUSES TO WORK AS
        DOMESTICS:
        
        “Contemporaries were aware that the popular stereotyping of (White) female indentured servants as whores, sluts and debauched wenches, discouraged their use in elite planter households. Many pioneer planters preferred to employ
        Amerindian women in their households…With the… establishment of an elitist social culture, there was a tendency to reject (White) indentured servants as domestics…black women…represented a more attractive option and, as a result, were widely employed as domestics in the second half of the 17th century. In 1675 for example John Blake, who had recently arrived on the island (of Barbados), informed his brother in Ireland that his White Indentured Servant was a ‘slut’ and he would like to be rid of her…(in favor of a ‘neger wench’).” [16]
        
        In the 17th century White slaves were cheaper to acquire than Negroes and therefore were often mistreated to a
        greater extent. Having paid a bigger price for the Negro,
        
        “the planters treated the black better than they did their ‘Christian’ White Servant. Even the Negroes recognized this and did not hesitate to show their contempt for those White Men who, they could see, were worse off than
        themselves…” [17]
        
        IT WAS WHITE SLAVES WHO BUILT AMERICA FROM ITS VERY BEGINNINGS AND MADE UP THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF SLAVE‑ ABORERS IN THE COLONIES NOT BLACKS in the 17th century. Negro slaves seldom
        had to do the kind of virtually lethal work the White Slaves of America did in the formative years of settlement.
        
        “The frontier demands for heavy manual labor, such as felling trees, soil clearance, and general infrastructural development, had been satisfied primarily BY WHITE INDENTURED SERVANTS (Slaves) BETWEEN 1627 AND 1643.” [18]
        
        The merchant class of early America was an equal opportunity enslaver and viewed with enthusiasm the bondage of all poor people within their grasp, including their own White kinsmen. There was a precedent for this in the English legal concept of villeinage, a form of
        medieval White Slavery in England.
        
        “…as late as 1669 those who thought of large‑scale agriculture assumed it would be manned not by Negroes but by servile Whites under a condition of villeinage. John Locke’s constitutions for South Carolina envisaged an hereditary group of servile ‘leet men’; and Lord Shaftsbury’s signory on Locke Island in 1674 actually attempted to put the scheme into practice.” [19]
        
        The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines servitude as
        
        “slavery or bondage of any kind.” The dictionary defines “bondage” as “being bound by or subjected to external control.” It defines “slavery” as “ownership of a person or persons by another or others.”
        
        HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WHITES IN COLONIAL AMERICA WERE OWNED OUTRIGHT BY THEIR MASTERS AND DIED IN SLAVERY. THEY HAD NO CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN LIVES AND WERE AUCTIONED ON THE BLOCK AND EXAMINED LIKE LIVESTOCK exactly like Black slaves, with the
        exception that these Whites were enslaved by their own race. White Slaves,
        
        “found themselves powerless as individuals, without honor or respect and driven into commodity production not by any inner sense of moral duty but by the outer
        stimulus of the whip.” [20]
        
        [1] Soncino edition, section Ecclesiastes, p. 58.
        
        [2] The British Empire in America, John Oldmixon, Vol. 2, p.
        186.
        
        [3] Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave
        Trade to America,
        Elizabeth Donnan, pp. 125‑126.
        
        [4] An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the
        British West Indies, Dalby Thomas, pp. 36‑37; The Role of the Sephardic Jews in
        the British Caribbean Area in the Seventeenth Century, G. Merrill; Caribbean
        Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 [1964‑65]; 32‑49.
        
        [5] White Servitude, Hilary McD. Beckles, pp. 6‑7, 71.
        
        [6] From Columbus
        to Castro, Eric Williams, p. 103.
        
        [7] Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America,
        Marcus W. Jernegan, p. 45.
        
        [8] Stowe Manuscripte 324, f. 6.
        
        [9] Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, p. 2,739.
        
        [10] cf. Genesis 9:25 in the New International Version
        Bible.
        
        [11] Handlin, p. 205.
        
        [12] Handlin, pp. 202‑204, 218.
        
        [13] Hening, Vol. 1, pp. 226, 258, 540.
        
        [14] Natural Rebels, Beckles, p. 29.
        
        [15] Handlin, p. 216.
        
        [16] Natural Rebels, Beckles, pp. 56‑57.
        
        [17] Bridenbaugh, p. 118.
        
        [18] Natural Rebels, Beckles, p. 8.
        
        [19] Handlin, p. 207.
        
        [20] White Servitude, Beckles, p. 5.
      - BJA
        
        All of what you just posted confuses indentured servitude with slavery, and what irish slavery did take place wasn’t in America. It was in South America, Barbados, West Indies, etc….
      - GWS Jr.
        
        Bullsh*t. You’ve not seen every single piece of documentation have you? I’ve only seen it for one family group – MINE – in NC which disproves your statement.
      - BJA
        
        I’ve seen enough, and read enough from historians, including Irish ones, but you haven’t disproven anything without proof, so show me the proof, and I will cede.
      - GWS Jr.
        
        Tell you what. You want to portray yourself as intelligent so we will play your game. BJA, your hypothesis states Irish slavery didn’t exist in America, correct? Well sir, you made the statement without concrete proof. I challenged it and your answer is to challenge me back? Oh no, since you’ve read “enough” from historians, including Irish, to make this determination as evidence of absolute proof and determined this to be fact, then I ask you TO PROVE YOUR NEGATIVE. Go ahead, I’ve got plenty of time. Statistical probability alone makes your assertion an astronomical improbability, and with no evidence for or against, the numbers will almost always turn up correct. It’s good you’ve read “enough” but what is enough? I’m Irish, have been to Ireland multiple times, seen my family’s geneology at numerous family reunions, and the like so I will only ever speak to what I know. But I know your assertion that there were no Irish slaves would be incorrect. Try to tell me they were classified as such, and therefore may only be…. and I will knock that out of the park.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Pretty sure the Irish weren’t chattel slaves they were cheaper because unlike the black ones you couldn’t keep them forever.
      - GWS Jr.
        
        I won’t be a smart ass so please don’t take my reply as such. Out of the tens of thousands of Irish slaves, do you think a mere “label” dictated humane treatment or law abiding policy? Several years ago my family paid for the history of our lineage and having a rare last name we got to see a pretty direct path back through history – our people first arrived here in 1664 from Ireland as “indentured servants” and weren’t given their walking papers until 1732. Helluva indentured contract, huh? 2 gens born into “indentured servitude.”
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Still was a far better deal than the chattel slaves got. Also out of tens of thousands I don’t think all were field workers some even held the position of plantation overseer.
      - GWS Jr.
        
        You do realize you’re trying to make a cookie-cutter pigeonholed point, right? NOTHING was textbook whatsoever. There are tens of thousands of different stories that exist. Africans had it horrible for centuries. Irish had it bad for decades. You and I can go tit for tat on links. We had a pretty exhaustive search done and we amazed at the documents, portraits, and later on, pictures of my ancestors up until the 20th century. Just as not all Africans were treated horrible, not all Irish were living the life of luxury as some seem to think. Africans were preferred house servants as the Irish were thought to be too dirty and untrustworthy for domestic work, and the men relegated to the shitty field work. EVERY single case? No, nothing is ALL or NOTHING. You said it, though – whoever OWNED them…maybe my people were dumb? You nor I can speak to their experiences other than what we read and research. All I know for sure is their arrival and their release, and bits and pieces in between. They were treated differently – some better, some worse. Africans were here in much greater numbers, and Irish slaves existed in the Carribean prior to 1619. Look up the African slave’s statements alluding to: Why are you treating us like the Irish? Perceived as mistreatment to be treated like them.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Is that even a thing looked up the term is it like local slang? They clearly had rules I’m not sure where the “nothing was textbook” part came from. For the most part there were specific guidelines set for their freedom with few cases where they were forced to stay in bondage longer.
        
        The only difference with my link os that it basically stated both had it equally bad lol.
        
        Don’t really care what some people think (I’m pretty sure the luxury part is an imbelishment by you though).
        
        I couldn’t find anything on the slaves statement outside of a supremacist listed but it didn’t have a source.
      - GWS Jr.
        
        Luxury was SARCASM. You wouldn’t believe the ignorance I see regarding all parts of history, not just personal narratives.
        
        I’ve read probably two dozen books on slavery in the US and it’s history. It was horrible and like most things, what I was taught in school was only a kernel of the truth of US history.
        
        “Nothing was textbook” – can’t believe I have to explain this – seriously? – we were a loosely held colonial territory for a LONG time – we were supposed to follow British rule and we developed our own rules simultaneously as time went on. Some might consider it a bit lawless as some did what they wanted and floured the authorities. So because you read something was supposed to be a certain way on Google doesn’t mean it was followed. You know, kind of like society today?
        
        Here are a few quick links for you.
        http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Try leaning goggle alone it’s not your friend let’s start with books that where written in the 15 16 17 th century etc
      - GWS Jr.
        
        I didn’t really see any White Supremacy grabbing these links. We’re you calling sites that differed in opinion from you White Supremacists? Or did I simply misunderstand? Try these:
        http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-the-forgotten-white-slaves-says-expert-john-martin-188645531-237793261.html
        
        http://m.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/27/1265498/-The-slaves-that-time-forgot
        
        http://www.africanamerica.org/topic/the-irish-the-forgotten-white-slaves
      - Dexter Brown
        
        You ever notice that EVERY SINGLE article out there used a SINGLE source as proof of Irish slaves? John Martin’s article “The Irish Slave Trade”. There is a reason no one uses anything else as a source. His article is rubbish too, it’s half wrong, and half out of context. His “facts” aren’t facts, in his article he says that King James II (who was king from 1685 until 1688) issues a proclamation in 1625 requiring Irish political prisoners to be sent to the west indies (there was no such proclamation in 1625, and he wasn’t even king).
        
        He says the Irish were sent to the West Indies, VA, and New England (I’ve seen that irish indentured servants were sent to the US colonies, but not slaves)
        
        Then he tries to convince people that indentured servitude and slavery were exactly the same. Not to say that some irish weren’t enslaved, but it wasn’t some big slave trade will millions of irish slaves all over north america, and more than blacks, for a longer time period as the whole “irish slave” thing has become.
        
        I take this article, written by an actual Irish Historian at the Limerick Library, over the completely unknown John Martin
        
        https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/liam-hogan/%E2%80%98irish-slaves%E2%80%99-convenient-myth
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Right
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Yes just the sites that had the quote “why are you treating us like the irish”. It’s not even included in any of your links…
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Exactly
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        White summary what ok you definitely clueless
      - BigG1971
        
        Enjoy. You simply can’t accept people of white color were treated like shit. This isn’t a pissing contest on who got treated worse – it’s the fact a lot of all our ancestors have been enslaved at some point since the beginning of time – not just yours.
        
        White Slavery, what the Scots already know
        by Kelly d. Whittaker
        
        A famous history professor stated that history was not a science but a continuing investigation into the past; a person’s conclusion is based on their own bias. This story will offer evidence that the Alba, Scots, Irish and Pics have been the longest race held in slavery. The reader will be responsible for their own bias pertaining to White Slavery.
        Alexander Stewart was herded off the Gildart in July of 1747, bound with chains. Stewart was pushed onto the auction block in Wecomica, St Mary’s County, Maryland. Doctor Stewart and his brother William were attending the auction, aware of Alexander being on that slave ship coming from Liverpool England. Doctor Stewart and William were residents of Annapolis and brothers to David of Ballachalun in Montieth, Scotland. The two brothers paid nine pound six shillings sterling to Mr. Benedict Callvert of Annapolis for the purchase of Alexander. He was a slave. Alexander tells of the other 88 Scots sold into slavery that day in “THE LYON IN MOURNING” pages 242-243.
        
        Jeremiah Howell was a lifetime-indentured servant by his uncle in Lewis County, Virginia in the early 1700’s. His son, Jeremiah, won his freedom by fighting in the Revolution. There were hundreds of thousands of Scots sold into slavery during Colonial America. White slavery to the American Colonies occurred as early as 1630 in Scotland.
        
        According to the Egerton manuscript, British Museum, the enactment of 1652: it may be lawful for two or more justices of the peace within any county, citty or towne, corporate belonging to the commonwealth to from tyme to tyme by warrant cause to be apprehended, seized on and detained all and every person or persons that shall be found begging and vagrant.. in any towne, parish or place to be conveyed into the Port of London, or unto any other port from where such person or persons may be shipped into a forraign collonie or plantation.
        
        The judges of Edinburgh Scotland during the years 1662-1665 ordered the enslavement and shipment to the colonies a large number of rogues and others who made life unpleasant for the British upper class. (Register for the Privy Council of Scotland, third series, vol. 1, p 181, vol. 2, p 101).
        
        The above accounting sounds horrific but slavery was what the Scots have survived for a thousand years. The early ancestors of the Scots, Alba and Pics were enslaved as early as the first century BC. Varro, a Roman philosopher stated in his agricultural manuscripts that white slaves were only things with a voice or instrumenti vocali. Julius Caesar enslaves as many as one million whites from Gaul. (William D Phillips, Jr. SLAVERY FROM ROMAN TIMES TO EARLY TRANSATLANTIC TRADE, p. 18).
        
        Pope Gregory in the sixth century first witnessed blonde hair, blue eyed boys awaiting sale in a Roman slave market. The Romans enslaved thousands of white inhabitants of Great Britain, who were also known as Angles. Pope Gregory was very interested in the looks of these boys therefore asking their origin. He was told they were Angles from Briton. Gregory stated, “Non Angli, sed Angeli.” (Not Angles but Angels).
        
        The eighth to the eleventh centuries proved to be very profitable for Rouen France. Rouen was the transfer point of Irish and Flemish slaves to the Arabian nations. The early centuries AD the Scottish were known as Irish. William Phillips on page 63 states that the major component of slave trade in the eleventh century were the Vikings. They spirited many ‘Irish’ to Spain, Scandinavia and Russia. Legends have it; some ‘Irish’ may have been taken as far as Constantinople.
        
        Ruth Mazo Karras wrote in her book, “SLAVERY AND SOCIETY IN MEDEIVEL SCANDINAVIA” pg. 49; Norwegian Vikings made slave raids not only against the Irish and Scots (who were often called Irish in Norse sources) but also against Norse settlers in Ireland or Scottish Isles or even in Norway itself…slave trading was a major commercial activity of the Viking Age. The children of the White slaves in Iceland were routinely murdered en masse. (Karras pg 52)
        
        According to these resources as well as many more, the Scots-Irish have been enslaved longer than any other race in the world’s history. Most governments do not teach White Slavery in their World History classes. Children of modern times are only taught about the African slave trade. The Scots do not need to be taught because they are very aware of the atrocities upon an enslaved race. Most importantly, we have survived to become one to the largest races on Earth!!!
        
        White Slavery in America
        
        The topic of this story is a sensitive one yet one of great importance. White slavery in America was real. There are many documents that verify the bondage, kidnapping and transporting of Brits to the Colonies as slaves. The importance of this story will help those who cannot find a ship passenger list on their ancestor. This story may not pertain to all who came to America that are not listed on ship passenger lists.
        
        The Journal of Negro History #52 pp.251-273 states, “The sources of racial thought in Colonial America pertaining to slave trade worked both directions with white merchandise as well as black.”
        
        Thomas Burton recorded in his Parliament Diary 1656-1659 vol. 4 pp. 253-274 a debate in the English Parliament focusing on the selling of British whites into slavery in the New World. The debate refers to whites as slaves ‘whose enslavement threatened the liberties of all Englishmen.’
        
        The British government had realized as early as the 1640’s how beneficial white slave labor was to the profiting colonial plantations. Slavery was instituted as early as 1627 in the British West Indies. The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series of 1701 records 25000 slaves in Barbados in which 21700 were white slaves.
        
        George Downing wrote a letter to the honorable John Winthrop Colonial Governor of Massachusetts in 1645, “planters who want to make a fortune in the West Indies must procure white slave labor out of England if they wanted to succeed.” Lewis Cecil Gray’s History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 vol.1 pp 316, 318 records Sir George Sandys’ 1618 plan for Virginia, referring to bound whites assigned to the treasurer’s office. “To belong to said office forever. The service of whites bound to Berkeley Hundred was deemed perpetual.”
        
        The Quoke Walker case in Massachusetts 1773 ruled that; slavery contrary to the state Constitution was applied equally to Blacks and Whites in Massachusetts.
        
        Statutes at Large of Virginia, vol. 1 pp. 174, 198, 200, 243 & 306 did not discriminate Negroes in bondage from Whites in Bondage.
        
        Marcellus Rivers and Oxenbridge Foyle, England’s Slaves 1659 consists of a statement smuggled out of the New World and published in London referring to whites in bondage who did not think of themselves as indentured servants but as “England’s Slaves” and “England’s merchandise.”
        
        Colonial Office, Public Records Office, London 1667, no. 170 records that “even Blacks referred to the White forced laborers in the colonies as “white slaves.” Pages 343 through 346 of Historical Sketch of the Persecutions Suffered by the Catholics of Ireland by; Patrick F. Moran refers to the transportation of the Irish to the colonies as the “slave-trade.”
        
        Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South explain that white enslavement was crucial to the development of the Negro slave system. The system set up for the white slaves governed, organized and controlled the system for the black slaves. Black slaves were “late comers fitted into a system already developed.” Pp 25-26. John Pory declared in 1619, “white slaves are our principle wealth.”
        The above quotations from various authors are just the tip of the iceberg on the white slave trade of the Americas. People from the British Isles were kidnapped, put in chains and crammed into ships that transported hundreds of them at a time. Their destination was Virginia Boston, New York, Barbados and the West Indies. The white slaves were treated the same or worse than the black slave. The white slave did not fetch a good price at the auction blocks. Bridenbaugh wrote in his accounting on page 118, having paid a bigger price for the Negro, the planters treated the black better than they did their “Christian” white servant. Even the Negroes recognized this and did not hesitate to show their contempt for those white men who, they could see, were worse off than themselves.
        
        Governments have allowed this part of American and British history to be swallowed up. The contemptible black slavery has taken a grip on people associated with American History. Yet, no one will tell of these accountings that are well established on to the middle 1800’s.
        
        Slavery is not something to be proud of but it is a fact that happened to every country, kingdom and empire that has been on this earth. Each of us needs to search our hearts and find the answer to stop racial hatred. One place to begin; realize that the black race was not the only race in the last 400 years that was in bondage
      - BigG1971
        
        And it’s “you’re definitely clueless.” I’m not “you” anything.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        😂😂😂my apologies for not proof reading a clueless discussion… But seriously goggle is not your friend… Real research ✋🏿 we are not saying white people didn’t treat white people like shit… We are talking about chattel slavery… And pre colonlism or after sir research mansa musa, Hannaible the great, golden age of Africa etc
        And today all white people benefit from chattel slavery ✋🏿I don’t argue with ppl name calling
      - usmcpgw
        
        white summary…. i am white?
        
        woglake wasicu mani wabli
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Figures
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        He should stop using goggle and go read a book from the 15 th century etc
      - Michael Ritch
        
        So should you! lol Gods forbid anyone challenge black Americans status of victim-hood! None of you bothered to mention the centuries of slavery western Europeans suffered under the continuous raids by northwestern Africans, Egyptians, Middle East slavers and then later on by Muslim slave traders and Muslim Moors! Nor was mentioned the CONTINUED practice of slavery in both Africa and the Middle East! Hypocrites the whole bigoted Afro-centric bunch of ya.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Where are the links
      - BigG1971
        
        Sweetheart – you want me to give you a link to my family’s genealogy report? As soon as you can prove you’re actually from Africa through genetics and genealogy.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Exactly
      - Kevin Waziki
        
        They were common criminals that served as free labor. They were free labor because they are paying a debt to society to attest for their criminal ways. It’s simple as that.
      - BHill
        
        Common criminals aka political prisoners captured by the English
        
        The English King didn’t take kindly to Irish sharecroppers who dared voice dissent of his maltreatment of them
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Not to be insensitive but there are millions of African who wish they could say the same who where regarded as animals
      - BHill
        
        Actually, many were kept for multiple generations, children as well.
        Legislation was passed forbidding the breeding of Irish to Africans as well in Virgina because it was so prevalent.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        I need a source for the many generations if you don’t mind. I already knew about the breeding restriction thing because you keep the children indefinitely if they were black.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Source and not goggle… Are you arguing that black ppl had it easy 😑
      - BHill
        
        Blacks were servants and cotton pickers. The Irish got the dangerous jobs, as no investment was made in them.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Agreed
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        That’s not true at all. Irish were sold as property as well as any other slave. Under congressional law all slaves-servitude was considered property. There were Irish who were born slaves, there were Irish who were life long slaves. Your assertion is false. Irish were cheaper than blacks, hence why nobody cared if they died.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Yeah actually it is true for the most part with their being few cases of forced life long servitude a majority were released at the end of their contract. A majority also came over here willingly (I know doesn’t fit your attempted narrative). Your naming exceptions to a rule and stating my claims are wrong? They were considered property throughout their servitude which wasn’t life long for an overwhelming majority of cases. They held jobs from field hand to plantation overseer (you know the guys who would whip unruly slaves). Of course they were fucking cheaper they weren’t life long servants this is common sense why pay more for something you are renting?
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        The misconception that Irish slaves came here willingly. Blacks didn’t come here enslaved for life long periods. That came later. The Irish being cheap had nothing to do with their enslavement period. Over five hundred thousand Irish died in a decade to slavery. That was almost half the Irish population. People need to learn the definition of chattel slavery. Any person defined as property is considered chattel. Just because you like defining “White” slaves as indentured servitude doesn’t mask the truth. They were slaves! Try to debunk and minimize white slavery because it doesn’t fit the black narrative. Pathetic. It’s not just about the Irish. Blacks owned plenty of white slaves during their rule around the world. They’re not as innocent as they like to act.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Chattel slaves definition “A chattel slave is an enslaved person who is owned for ever and whose children and children’s children are automatically enslaved. Chattel slaves are individuals treated as complete property, to be bought and sold. Chattel slavery was supported and made legal by European governments and monarchs.”
        
        It’s funny that you used therm “narrative” because I have none. I’m a 25 year old black man I don’t care which side white or black want to be the victim it has no effect on me. I’ve already made a life for myself on this little rock. That being said I will point out inconsistencies in statements. It’s not a misconception a majority did come here willingly and likewise were released at the end of their terms. Of course their were black people who enslaved other races you fucking retard did I say there weren’t?
        
        The irish have a long sketchy history with other European cultures who viewed them as savages (not sure why so many of them decide to kiss ass now). Before the irish were given the title white they were treated just as bad as blacks post slavery. The even held conjoined nicknames like (inverted negroes, green nigger, and vice versa for negroes the smoked irish). I have no reason to hold a bias I’m not the one pushing an agenda nor am I the one who sparked this conversation.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        I’m a retard? This coming from a negro who can’t define chattel slavery. Chattel slavery has nothing to with term of enslavement you idiot. Chattel slavery is defined as property. Irish were sold as property. They are defined as chattel. Under congressional law in those times, they were seen as property. You’re trying to sugar coat the history of it. Like most negroes, it don’t fit your pathetic victimization agenda. The majority of Irish died in chains. They weren’t given their freedom. Majority came here under duress or false hope. I say you have a narrative because you sit here trying to debunk the history like it wasn’t so bad. That would be like me saying negroes were resting in 5 star hotels when their negro asses weren’t picking cotton.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Yes lol. I just pulled the definition from the first source I found online where did you get yours because by the logic the term shouldn’t exist and should just be called slavery.
        
        The irish were as temporary property the full cost went back to the shipwrights. What history am I sugar coating my poor dillusional white Knight lol.
        
        Black and white slaves burned Jamestown to the ground. Hundreds died. The planters feared a re-occurence. Their solution was to divide the races against each other. They instilled a sense of superiority in the white slaves and degraded the black slaves. White slaves were given new rights; their masters could not whip them naked without a court order,etc. White slaves whose daily condition was no different from that of Blacks, were taught that they belonged to a superior people. The races were given different clothing. Living quarters were segregated for the first time. But the whites were still slaves.
        
        Again like I pointed out of course they were treated poorly they were cheap and no one was going to come looking for reimbursement if one died. Yes you are attempting to be a victim and it’s hilarious.
        
        Two more things my example for why they were treated poorly I purchase a TV and I rent a TV. The one I purchase is mine for life so that goes in my area where it will receive less damage (arbitrarily). The one I rented will go in the room where it will most likely receive most damage because I have to send it back eventually (release it) but if it gets damaged I don’t have to pay for it so fuck it. Like I said not even attempting to debunk history that’s you throwing your own retarded spin on my comment my brother is 1/2 Irish his family came over in the 1800’s his great grandfather and my great grandfather use to talk about this all the time seeing as how they were both working in the south and eventually after his father finished his 10 year term (his owner extended his contract) he came back years later and purchased my great great grandfather and they moved up north and worked in a stetson factory.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        I’m Irish, Scottish, German, British, I’m all white. Either way the conversation goes no where. We will have to agree to disagree. It’s the constant comparison that drives me mad. Indentured servitude or not, half a million Irish men and woman lost their lives due to slavery. Small number compared to negroes, I know, it is still part of our history. Nobody deserves to white wash that. I wonder what you’d say about Barbary slave trade. Kidnapped Europeans forced into slavery by Northern African pirates. I’m sure they had it good to. It’s ironic that negroes claim white slaves didn’t have it as bad as negroes. Then again, I suppose it makes it difficult to use slavery as an excuse if every race was afflicted by it.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        I didn’t create the comparison so why bitch to me about it. Yeah that sucks and the Irish men clearly didn’t give a fuck that it happened… they didn’t even need to as I pointed out multiple times the irish men gained white hood (were considered white) long before black people had actual rights, but no don’t let that effect your narrative.
        
        Negroes in america complain about slavery because white people in america like to pretend like it didn’t happen or should stay in the past while ignoring the ramifications it had on the present (whilst some demand they keep there confederate southern pride). Negroes in america complain because literally one generation ago their parents weren’t allowed to accumulate money, have high paying jobs or to be treated with common decency which lead to a vicious poverty cycle in which you either go harder than everyone else (me and a few others) or you get left behind in the dust roughly the other unlucky 80%.
        
        I know about the Barbary slave trade. I also know it didn’t have any negative impacts on the surviving slaves children because they were sent back home and there descendants got to pretend like it didn’t happen because they didn’t grow up in a society that treated them like shit no Jim crow for white slaves, no lynching for descendants, no public beatings, no verbal assault based on race, no kkk to chase them out of homes, no store burnings because they wouldn’t by your products, no destroying entire neighborhoods because a woman lied about rape (all you get was an apology and money which brings no one back). No burning down an entire well developed area because a white guy was found not guilty and assholes wanted to Lynch him anyway causing a standoff from those “uppity” bastards who would dare defend an innocent man, no boys beat to death for whistling at a women, no man dragged around town by two people who didn’t like his skin color (1999).
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        Negroes complain about slavery to push white guilt, nothing more. Slave owners are dead. Negroes keep playing the victims, like you’re owed something. White people have given our blood for your negroe asses. So you can sit here and whine about racism, slavery, white supremacy, until the end of fucking time. You repeatedly sit here and sugar coat white slavery.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Incorrect mostly complain about the time that followed slavery white people like you normally shut down as soon as the conversation starts which is normally slavery. No one is blaming you for it you had nothing to do with it you’re a nobody.
        
        You clearly spend too much time in echo chambers.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        You look at modern times. Disproportionate negro on white crime. Whites labeled as racists simply for stating an opinion. Constantly accused of being privileged as a result of slavery. The excuses, the blame, the extortion. Negroes will never ever forgive slavery, ever. It will forever be used against the white population.
        
        It’s not ok to blame the whole negro population for one negro criminal. Somehow it’s ok to blame the whole white population for slavery.
        
        Throughout history there’s evil, then there’s good.
        
        Sure you had people who were ok with slavery, you had people who said slavery was wrong. You had whites who died to keep their slaves, you had whites who died speaking out against slavery. I’m not talking about the civil war, i’m talking about in general. Spain abolished slavery in the mid 1500’s. England went on a rampage on slavery by attacking slave ships. White abolitionists in the 1840’s.
        
        Estimated 3-4 percent of white americans owned black slaves. That’s a far cry from the millions upon millions of whites that were living here in those time. So how about negroes stop claiming we’re all racist, descendant slave owners.
        
        You have every opportunity to make wealth as i do. Some reason you think your struggles are harder than mine, simply because you’re black. I didn’t grow up rich. I wasn’t given my wealth. I had to work my ass off. “White privilege” didn’t hand me a silver spoon simply because i’m white.
        
        People are accountable for their own misfortunes. Blame game needs to stop.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Incorrect again there are far more cases of actual white racism that people like you attempt to push under the rug. Singing “you can hang them from a tree but they’ll never sign with me” racist, killing 9 black people in a church who were literally as nice as fucking possible too you? Racist. Come on the jackass even got burger King afterwards that isn’t a luctuary criminals get.
        
        Of course I have every opportunity I just have to start further down on the ladder than most people do to unfair conditions that were forced upon my parents and grandparents… that is literally my only gripe. Like I said before I’ve basically made it. I’m a cop my bachelor’s is basically done. I’m moving up to detective at the next possible moment and I’m 25 with one kid. I went to underfunded public schools, had a job since I was 14 to help pay bills, I’ve been shot (mistakenly) who was chasing the wrong suspect, I’ve had racial slurs thrown at me three officers as a kid. I’ve had lazy teachers who would literally had out crossword puzzles I literally learned nothing in 8th grade math. Some of us make it the ones willing to skip out on child hood and having fun the ones who want to be kids while they are kids tend to fail and get caught up in the fucked up self sustaining trap known as the hood.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        It was called a slave trade. Africa traded slaves, slaves that were already slaves. Whites didn’t go to Africa and rip negroes out their homes to farm the plantations. Negroes own people did.
        
        Arabic slave trade saw roughly 40 million negro slaves. Modern arabic countries still selling castrated slaves today. Africa still has modern slavery. Asian countries still have modern slaves.
        
        How about bitching about something that actually concerns the present. You want to point fingers at whites for all your problems. White population is the world’s “devil’ as negroes like to call us. Nothing but blame and guilt trips on the white population.
        
        Whites are far from the only perpetrators of evil in this world.
        
        1820’s Lincoln sent free negro slaves to liberia, those who wanted to go back. Yet a majority of freemen stayed in America. Why? Yeah contrary to belief. North abolished slavery 60 years before the civil war.
        
        Ambassador Cyrille Oguin apologized recently for Africa’s involvement in slavery, even offered American negroes land in west africa. I wonder how many people accepted.
        
        I don’t know what you expect. I guess you think it’s plausible for 6% of the population to hold the majority wealth in this country. To me that sounds fucking ridiculous.
        
        White people so bad, yet everyone flocks to our fucking countries. Asian countries for asians, black countries for black, white countries for everyone. It’s a white fucking genocide.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        You literally skipped over the part were the European traders teamed up with coastal african slavery to capture more slaves because they couldn’t keep up with demand.
        
        Literally no one is saying that whites are the greatest evil keep playing the victim though.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        Literally no one? Snap to reality. We’re blamed for everything wrong with this world, by you, by any non white there is. I’m not playing victim, i’m giving you a dose of your own shit.
        
        White racism.. I’m sure no white guys ever been called a derogatory name by a negro, or been shot, or been poor. Your troubles aren’t portrayed to your race only.
        
        I know a white dude somehow passed through school and couldn’t even read or write. Irony.
        
        Hate goes both ways. Most the comments on here are negroes and whites filled with hate towards one another. Racism, there’s one race, human race. Racism is another bullshit term to keep people divided. Nobody’s born with hate, their taught that shit. Our government, media, do a good job portraying this hate onto the public. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
        
        I’m white of course, live in majority black neighborhood. I’ve seen both sides.
        
        I’m glad to hear you’re a cop.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Yes literally no one as I leave in reality and not a comment section.
        
        Yes you are playing the victim to give me a dose of my own shit would be for you to give me the benefit of the doubt which you don’t seeing as how between the two of us you have been the only one generalizing an entire a group lol.
        
        I’m positive they have even though insults are not racist it’s the I’m better than you because of the color of your skin mindset that makes it racist (Example black Israelites are racist).
        
        I know the troubles aren’t for my race only they just effect more members of my “race”.
        
        I know people aren’t born with hate it’s manufactured. Racism wasn’t created by whites specifically it was just made mainstream in america by our leaders who happened to be white back then and is kept alive by our leaders today who are every color under the sun.
        
        Even without racism there was tribalism Igboo’s (african tribe) believe they are better than others so did the ghandans basically the same shit here happens their but with no color code. The irish were damn near wiped out and people still argue about whether Italians are actually “white” or not. Hell whenever Irish or black slaves would rebel the masters would play one side against the other to quickly quell it meaning that there any future opposition would no longer arise.
        
        Hell thanks.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        Yep no one’s blaming us. That’s why random white cops are being shot for others cop actions, targeted simply because their white. That’s why milwaukee’s white population is being attacked for a negro cop’s action. Somehow I’m playing victim bitching about problems today. Yet negroes are what? It’s hypocritical. You don’t get to sit there and throw out boo hoo stories and then basically tell me to shut up. That’s what the negro population doing on these forums. They don’t want to hear white history, they don’t want their victim cards taken from them. That’s why you try to whitewash it. Somehow you think you worked harder for what you have than i did. It’s hogwash, you know nothing about me. Don’t assume because i’m white everything was just given to me. I got my boo hoo stories too.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Same happens for blacks but that apparently is just one of those amazing non existent double standards. Profiling Aalborg blacks is allowed in new York because a few commit crimes.
        
        Yeah congratulations you have a bunch of black Dylan Roofs who didn’t kill anybody. Oh wait I’m sorry lone agitators who are disturbed.
        
        Yes you are playing the victim because none of this effects you. That’s literally the point people like attempt to drive home in the conversations. You don’t know the victims and you aren’t the victim so you are in fact playing the victim.
        
        This is forum you dense child yet you have equated with the negroes population. Which unfortunately makes you dumbass. You are in effect as dumb as a (how you so eloquently put it) negroes who believes white people on Storm front are representatives of all “white” people.
        
        True I don’t know you I don’t know what you have had to go through growing up. I don’t know if you had family members mistaken for criminals and shot. I don’t know if you had to wake up to bunch of lights and guns in your face because the officers went in the wrong house. I don’t know if you had to lay on the ground as child because dumbasses started shooting, I don’t know if you had to live in house where your mother had to pick one of three bills to pay. I don’think know if you had to wake up 4 in the morning to use your neighbors hot water. All I know is that was my reality.
        
        This isn’t a fucking contest the person (not black) who started this wanted it to be. I don’t. Not once did I say things were handed to you that’s the victimization nonsense I’m talking about.
        
        I don’t like touching the white privilege topic because people’s rectum explode when it’s mentioned but literally all it means is that you get the benefit of the doubt in majority white societies… that’s it. Literally look at our conversation you’ve accused me and attempted to label me multiple times while simultaneously whining about being labeled by other people while I haven’t labeled you once.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        You’re right. I didn’t mean to label you, or generalize. I guess the conversation got away from me. I started characterizing you with other people.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        You’re pretty typical negro, though. Resort to petty insults because it’s all you got. Skipped over the bases of this whole conversation. Spent most of the time playing victim yourself, while telling me to stop bringing up reverse racism in the world today. You’re a hypocrite. Complaining about slavery you never endured, jim crow laws, you never saw. You’ve never seen racism at it’s prime. I have been a victim of black on white crime, robbery, fist fights. I have been called racial slurs by negroes. It’s whatever. I don’t hold it against people, i don’t hate anyone over it. It’s not an everyday thing, it does happen. On the racial bullshit going on today pisses me off, pisses you off. I don’t hate anyone based on color, as i assume you don’t hate people based on color.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        And you fell off the horse again.
        
        This is where you lose and will always lose its not reverse racism it’s just fucking racism.
        
        Nope I complained about the effects of slavery but I can see how this is escaping you. My great great grandfather was a slave his freedom was purchased by his irish friend and they moved to a slightly more accepting area. My great great grandfather couldn’t hold a job because Jim crow etc. He has 5 kids 3 lynched while trying to protect the third in new York he’s moves back down south again struggling to get a job education barrier. His remaining son and daughter get turned down for any good schools (blacks not allowed). Being forced into rinky dink public school’s with next to no funding because their is no infrastructure in the community. Fast forward again more walls and barriers being placed up segregation in full effect my grandmother is a child family moves to philadelphia (no lones allowed for blacks to move into north east) so they settled for row homes next to old abandoned factories (cheaper labour overseas). Grandmother an adult has my mom grandfather death by cop (mistaken identity). Mom reaches 20 has me moves into other slightly less crappy area because she was the first to finish college born in 1970 has me at the age of 20 (father killed by drug dealer). (This of course skipping the kkk chasing my great grandfather and grandmother out of neighborhoods where they did have jobs.
        
        My only problem with all that shit is that I had to start like I was fresh immigrant to this country when my family has been here since the 1700’s.
        
        It’s impossible for me to hate someone based on their color. Outside of two instances of a white guys either throwing bottles at me from cars and yelling nigger my interactions with white people have been as pleasant as my interactions with literally everyone else.
        
        Like I constantly tell people I’m 25 I have no idea how old you are but all this nonsense will end with me. We still have a large majority of people both black and white who were alive during those times. I can’t change a white person from the 60’s dislike for blacks just like I can’t change my grandmother’s dislike of white people.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        I have a boss who owns a veterinary hospital, customers mostly negroes. He refers them to n@ggers with me. It’s uncomfortable to say the least. He’s about mid 70s, so he lived during those times as well. I can’t relate to that kind of hate, never endured anything like it. I just want everyone to understand. Other hates don’t define me. I lived parentless youth, i don’t know my parents or anything about my family tree. I have no real identity other than my DNA.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        Even so, there are whites experiencing that hate in modern days. As, you and others defend their race, so will i. Whether i’m affected by it directly or not.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        This is also another part where you lose. I’m not like you or other idiots who defend people by racial lines. I defend everyone equally those who deserve blame receive it those who deserve pitty receive it.
        
        Like I said earlier you’re arguing with the wrong type of person take your bs race bullshit somewhere else. There are plenty of black “fauexteps” for you to argue with around your level of mental capability and racism.
      - Joshua D Bird
        
        Get the fuck out of here with your high horse non sense. I’m sure you’re out here defending white folks. You can take that tough shit somewhere else. We’re online tough guy. You must completely misunderstood my statement, or just simply naive. You are a hypocrite! You try to bash me about comments, yet you have sat here doing the same shit. I see anyone mistreated and i disapprove, i will speak my mind. I simply made the comment about defending the white race, because according to you i’m not allowed to speak up because it doesn’t directly affect me. You are taking me the wrong way, buddy.
      - Tarfiel Archelone
        
        Yes I am it’s my job. That being said I’ve been doing it since highschool (their color was irrelevant to me). The high horse always looks bad to those still on the ground.
        
        Tough shit? There was literally nothing tough about my comment at least nothing an adult would see as being tough.
        
        Oh my fucking god I was making a counter point that you weren’to smart enough to understand. “Not being allowed to speak about things that directly effect you” was virtually your whole argument about slavery and the Jim crow Era (you weren’to alive for it therefore it has no effect and you have nothing to say).
      - Kevin Waziki
        
        Hmmm, I wonder why these “debates” are only taking place on social media websites by common folk with no grasp of history beyond the decade of the 90’s. You can say the Irish were subjected to slavery in the Americans until you’re blue in the face, but the only “sources” I’ve seen are from Stormfront and other hack white supremacist journalists who are trying to arrange this to fit their poorly sourced narrative. Academia has not proven this only to the extent that common Irish criminals came here simply as indentured servants. NOT SLAVERY. No sources, no credibility for people like you.
      - BHill
        
        Because academia is dominated by lying j ews who love to tell it like it ain’t and control all narrative.
        
        The Internet is changing all of it, thank heavens
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        That’s why you read what was written then
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Exactly
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Not chattel slaves… Slavery has been around since the beginning… Chattel slavery was what Africans endured… That’s his point
      - BHill
        
        The so called Irish historians are promoted by The English (EU runs Ireland) to promote the falsehoods regarding Irish slavery.
        Irish were by definition slaves under the Penal Laws and even prior. They couldn’t Own land, lease land, inherit land, own a horse, practice law, bear arms, educate themselves or children, use Gaelic, attend mass, hold any political positions..
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Blacks where a color and animals
      - BHill
        
        Fool…
        
        African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.
        
        The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce.
        Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
        
        In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.
        
        This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, Legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.”
        In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        Why the name calling 🤔
      - BHill
        
        And Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts, NC, SC, Alabama and Rhode Island
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        And even then it was not chattel slavery
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        More docile really 🤔But you don’t mention all the insurrection
      - Peacefulharmony1
        
        And I stop reading at that point…. Yes white and black at one point where both indentured servants… However, ex bacon rebellion they got together to overthrow the wealth… This racism was created and cattle slavery which blacks where subjected to not white people or Irish… Whatever you all yourself….the white where duked for a few privilliage a
      - Bobby English
        
        GET IT RIGHT!
        
        THE NEGRO SLAVE COST MONEY – THE IRISH DIDN’T!
        
        WHEN THE NEGRO WAS MISTREATED, HE USED TO COMPLAIN, THAT THE MASTER WAS TREATING HIM LIKE “THE IRISH”!
      - Tamara-rxc Downey
        
        BJA that’s crap. Black slavery in the colonies didn’t start until the 1640’s. Prior to that Blacks willing entered into indentured servitude.
        
        The Celtics were slaves before Black slavery was even heard of.
      - bja
        
        I’ll take the historical documents word on this matter over yours, no offense.
      - usmcpgw
        
        1516: the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, authorises slave-raiding expeditions to Central America. One group of slaves aboard a Spanish caravel rebel and kill the Spanish crew before sailing home – the first successful slave rebellion recorded in the New World.
        
        1516: in his book Utopia, Sir Thomas More argues that his ideal society would have slaves but they would not be ‘non-combatant prisoners-of-war, slaves by birth, or purchases from foreign slave markets.’ Rather, they would be local convicts or ‘condemned criminals from other countries, who are acquired in large numbers, sometimes for a small payment, but usually for nothing.’ (Trans. Paul Turner, Penguin, 1965)
        
        1607
        
        14 May 1607: Jamestown, the first permanent British colony in North America, is founded in modern Virginia.
        
        1612: The first permanent, although non-official, British colony is founded in Bermuda.
        
        1613
        
        1613: Lorenzo Pignoria publishes De Servis et Eorum apud Veteres Ministeriis, a history of slavery in classical Rome.
        
        1614
        
        23 November 1614: Bermuda colony becomes a Crown possession.
        
        1617
        
        1617: first records of slaves in Bermuda.
        
        1617: first records of slaves in Bermuda.
        
        1621
        
        3 June 1621: Dutch West India Company chartered and granted a monopoly to trade in the Caribbean. (Dutch slave traders had been operating with varying degrees of success since about 1600.)
        
        1624
        
        28 January 1624: Thomas Warner founds the first British Colony in St Christopher, now normally known as St Kitts.
        
        1625
        
        1625
        
        1625: Foundation of the Danish West India Company.
        
        14 May 1625: Captain John Powell lands on Barbados and claims the island for King James I.
        
        1627
        
        1627: a Spanish-Peruvian Jesuit, Alonso de Sandoval, publishes Naturaleza, Policia, … Costumbres i Ritos, Disciplina, i Catechismo Evangelico de todos Etíopes (The Nature, Policy, … Customs and Rituals, Disciplines, and Gospel Catechism of all Ethiopians), which argues that slavery combines all the world’s evils.
        
        17 February 1627: Henry Powell, John Powell’s brother, along with 80 British settlers and 10 African slaves, found a colony on Barbados at Jamestown (modern Holetown).
        
        On this date in 1606, the first recorded birth of a child of African decent in the continental United States occurred. This was is in the Cathedral Parish Archives in St. Augustine, Florida, thirteen years before enslaved Africans were first brought to the English colony at Jamestown in 1619.
        
        William Tucker, the first Black child born (recorded) in the American colonies, was baptized on January 3, 1624, in Jamestown, Virginia. Two of the first Africans to be brought to North America in 1619 were simply called Anthony and Isabella they were married and in 1624 gave birth to the first Black child born in English America naming him William Tucker in honor of a Virginia Planter.
      - usmcpgw
        
        One of the places we have the clearest views of that “terrible transformation” is the colony of Virginia. In the early years of the colony, many Africans and poor whites — most of the laborers came from the English working class — stood on the same ground. Black and white women worked side-by-side in the fields. Black and white men who broke their servant contract were equally punished.
        
        • Arrival of first Africans to Virginia Colony
        
        • Africans in court
        
        Anthony Johnson was a free black man who owned property in Virginia
        
        All were indentured servants. During their time as servants, they were fed and housed. Afterwards, they would be given what were known as “freedom dues,” which usually included a piece of land and supplies, including a gun. Black-skinned or white-skinned, they became free.
        
        Historically, the English only enslaved non-Christians, and not, in particular, Africans. And the status of slave (Europeans had African slaves prior to the colonization of the Americas) was not one that was life-long. A slave could become free by converting to Christianity. The first Virginia colonists did not even think of themselves as “white” or use that word to describe themselves. They saw themselves as Christians or Englishmen, or in terms of their social class. They were nobility, gentry, artisans, or servants.
        
        One of the few recorded histories of an African in America that we can glean from early court records is that of “Antonio the negro,” as he was named in the 1625 Virginia census. He was brought to the colony in 1621. At this time, English and Colonial law did not define racial slavery; the census calls him not a slave but a “servant.” Later, Antonio changed his name to Anthony Johnson, married an African American servant named Mary, and they had four children. Mary and Anthony also became free, and he soon owned land and cattle and even indentured servants of his own. By 1650, Anthony was still one of only 400 Africans in the colony among nearly 19,000 settlers. In Johnson’s own county, at least 20 African men and women were free, and 13 owned their own homes.
        
        In 1640, the year Johnson purchased his first property, he owned three slave. One of which fled and Johnson sued his neighbor. the courts returned the servant and he became the first real permament slave
      - usmcpgw
        
        Over the course of three centuries, African slaves in South America amassed over 90 percent of those taken from their homelands. To put that in a numerical perspective, it’s recorded that approximately 10.5 out of the recorded 12.5 million taken actually made it across the Atlantic Ocean without dying.
        
        As is reported by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, six percent of these black slaves were taken to North America.
    - IndependenceIsNotFree
      
      Cite your sources. Sounds like blogger dribble to me.
      - Tionia
        
        Oh he said he got his info from: “Virginia historical archives ( not available on line) where the documents are kept is where I got my information. you will have to go there yourself like I did and use a FOIA request and they will not do the research for you.” Which seems kinda convenient to me… Not saying it isn’t true mind you just saying it seems convenient!
      - BJA
        
        I contacted the Library of Virginia, and in short their response to me was:
        
        “Very few documents survive from the early years of the Virginia colony, and I do not see a bill of lading for the “White Lion” among the colonial records in our catalog. We have forwarded your email to our Library Reference staff; they will reply if additional relevant information turns up on published sources.”
        
        The Reference Staff replied:
        
        “Your email was forwarded to Library Reference Services for suggestions regarding published sources. From the research completed thus far it appears that there is no mention of the existence of a bill of
        
        lading from the White Lion that documents the trade at Jamestown of the slaves that had been captured from the Portuguese vessel. Likewise there doesn’t appear to be any mention of an existing document that definitively designates the status of this group as a whole as being either indentured servants or slaves at that time. No year is associated with the names — information vital in determining the end of a servant’s term of bondage.”
      - Tionia
        
        Maybe mr mcpgw got a bit mixed up then…
        Isn’t it interesting that you got information without having to be there…
        It disturbes me when people seem to be playing games…
        All some of us want is the truth.
        Thanks BJA for going out of your way to find the truth for us all…
      - southron_98
        
        It is available on line though I think he is wrong
      - MegMarkR1
        
        I’m sure you could also just go to NARA and research the info as well. For
        someone who claims to be learned like USMC does, his punctuation is horrible
        😛 All of the information he quotes is a matter of public record anyway. Anyone can gain access to it.
    - Jim in Texas
      
      While your points are all valid, it’s difficult to read your response and not come away with the impression that you think therefore that blacks should not be seen as victims of slavery since the Irish seem to have been able to recover and pull themselves out of slavery. I hope this is not your intention.
      - GW Sedberry Jr.
        
        Jim, I’m of direct Irish blood, and I never personally knew any of my ancestors who were enslaved or free. I’ve never even had the thought that I’m owed anything for that horrible period. So, I think Bobby is irritated that whites and blacks were both enslaved, indentured servants, plain servants, or whatever. But America discussed ONLY one part, granted a giant part, of American history with regards to the human cost. All I know is my people were slaves/servants/definition of the day – and that led to my good life as an American citizen. Some people want to focus on something that no one alive today has witnessed. Time to use it as a historical reference, not entitlement.
    - Susie Thompson
      
      At that time the Scots and Irish were often considered one and the same. You do an injustice to the former by not giving them consideration. Barbados doesn’t have a community of whites of Irish extraction. They were referred to as the Scots Red Legs of Barbados and their forefathers worked alongside their African counterparts in the sugar cane fields. Sadly, if you watch YouTube videos these humble white folk are accused of being the descendants of white colonial slave masters by ignorant black Barbadians. If true why are they mixed interracially and living in what appears to be poverty?
  - Jesse Woodward
    
    And who do you think the Dutch bought them from? They didn’t just go into Africa and pick people out of the jungles. They purchased them from a long-existing slave market in which Africans who were conquered by rival Africans were in turn sold/traded to anyone who could pay for them, including other Africans and Europeans, but the largest purchasers were from the Middle East.
    
    Regardless, a problem with all of these supposed ‘facts’ in this article is that technically America as a nation did not exist in the 17th century. This is talking about slavery in the British empire.
    
    Still, if you want to talk about slavery in what are not known as the American continents it did not begin with the arrival of Europeans. Native peoples fought, conquered, and enslaved each other for centuries before whitey arrived on their shores.
    
    Slavery was a horrible evil but in those times it was common practice in most of the world, and throughout history just about all people owned slaves and had been enslaved. Just look at the word itself. It derives from Slav, which is an ethnic group of white Europeans. Syrians and Egyptians enslaved Jews, Romans enslaved thousands from the Picts to the Moors, as well as other Romans. Persians enslaved various conquered peoples. The list goes on and on but everyone for some reason tends to mainly associate the practice of slavery with the ~4% or less of wealthy Americans who owned slaves; a practice that really only existed for less than 80 years in the United States.
    
    Let’s also not forget who also led the charge in abolishing slavery. Not only in their own lands, but who set the humanitarian precedent that led to slavery being eradicated as a common practice: white Europeans.
    
    History is ugly from all sides. Nobody’s ancestor’s hands are clean if you dig back far enough.
    - BJA
      
      Yes, the USA didn’t exist then and this was all British Territory, but I think most people consider it the start of America. I’m quite sure it would be 100% impossible to determine who the first slave and slave owner in the USA was, since the 1790 Census (the first US Census) states that there were almost 700,000 slaves in the country at the time, you could estimate that when the Constitution was ratified in 1789 there were a similar number of slaves, and all 700,0000 would be the “first” at the same time, and their owners the “first slave owners” at the same time.
      
      Slavery is a lot older than the Slavs as well, the oldest known artifacts of slavery date to the Neolithic Era (4500BC or so) in the region now known as france.
    - jaw444
      
      i think the significance of looking closely at the history of slavery of blacks in what eventually became the United States is because it can be looked as the roots of such slavery, the codification of it in the Constitution, the long and bloody US civil war, and how relations between blacks and whites evolved after that, the continuation of slavery in the South by by various legal means, the gradual development of improvement in black civil rights, and the existing condition of blacks in the US relative to whites which again, can and is looked at as having roots in the beginnings of the dominate white civilization in the geographical area of the US. It’s not just idle speculation about distant history but seeking information about the roots of today’s conditions, historical and cultural contextualization, to improve understanding under conditions where there is a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding.
    - Warrior KM
      
      An “African” does not equate to Black.
      - Jovan Campbell
        
        It does when you are stopped by the police…
      - Warrior KM
        
        Touché. True that.
      - Warrior KM
        
        My point (which is also related to this topic and not police stops) was that so many people want to justify slavery here in America with the argument that “Africans sold other Africans to the slave ships enroute to America”.
        
        BUT this is a weak argument because just like white people have different nations (Italians, Germans, Polish, Swedish, Jews etc) SO DOES AFRICA!
        
        Amhara, Afar, Igbu, Khanuri, Koisan, Somali, Ethiopians, Congo, Tigrinya, Tuareg, Wodaabi, Tigre, Wolof, Xhosa, Niger, Nigeria, Yoruba, Zaghawa, Zulu etc the list goes on.
        
        •Not to mention, they fail to include the fact that though some were sold, many were STOLEN, KIDNAPPED, and other nations in Africa were FORCED to comply with the slave trade, or they too would become slaves, kidnapped and brought over.
        
        •Lastly, in their mild attempt at repainting history and sugar-coating slavery here in the U.S., they conveniently gloss over the fact that the slaves brought here were the only slaves that were purposefully dehumanized by the following:
        
        1) Their ability to learn was forhibitted. If they were caught learning, it was grounds for execution.
        
        2) They were whipped, beaten and put into in humane contraptions (head and feet locked into wooden/steel restraints) built to break down their psyche and make them feel like cattle/animals/lower than a human.
        
        3) Some men were castrated and many women were raped on a daily basis.
        
        Global-wide, slavery committed in the U.S. was the worst form of slavery known to mankind.
        
        Taking away a humans ability to learn for hundreds of years will result in inherited adverse reactions for generations to come in the distant future until efficiently rehabilitated. They always try to pay people off with monetary means. We didn’t/don’t need money for reparations we simply needed complimentary QUALITY counseling and superior EDUCATION to make up for the atrocities.
        
        The results would certainly rehab this entire nation!
        
        (btw Jovan, this is Kia Eccentric in BWAM lol)
  - Bryan Ventre
    
    Slaves were sold 1st by the English- read “White Cargo” for a fascinating study
  - Conspiracy Cat
    
    He said, SOLD BY ARABS! There were no Arab slavers making birth on colonial shores… Please read before making a remark!
  - ToeUp FromTheFlowUp
    
    Another ass hat who speaks as if they are learned when the only thing you know of is garbage.
    - BJA
      
      Thanks for your intelligent and well sourced contribution to the conversation.
      - jaw444
        
        LOL
  - RJ Keith
    
    I do know the 20 Africans on the Dutch warship were captured from either a Portuguese or Spanish slave ship and were sold as a prize of war not as slaves but as indentured servants.
  - Bobby English
    
    DUTCH?????????????????
    
    YOU MEAN DUTCH JEWS?
  - Bobby English
    
    DUTCH?
    YOU MEAN DUTCH JEWS!
  - BHill
    
    The ‘Dutch’ were J EWs….the entire slave trade was controlled by them. Shipping Manifests and ownership prove this fact as do the auctions themselves…
  - DavieGrohlton
    
    Have you not heard of the triangle slave trade? Irish slave trade?
    - bja
      
      Oh please, tell me more about the irish slave trade…. oh you mean indentured servant trade…
- GSWSyndicate
  
  Actually enough were sold to America to where they (the Moroccans, Algerians and Yeminites) did enough business to continuously hold our, and Englands merchant sailors hostage for about 1 million dollars a ship. Thomas Jefferson finally had enough and created the U.S. Navy to fight them (and won) and the ransom insanity (similar to ISIS today) stopped. (Barbary Wars). http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjprece.html
- Tom Jefferson
  
  Blacks stole blacks and traded them to Arabs….need to do some reading brother.
  - Warrior KM
    
    “Africans” does not equate to Black. Also, please cite your sources, so that we too may learn what you know. Thank you.
    - Say It Aint So
      
      African does equal to black. all indigenous africans are and were BLACK. Non black africans are invaders
- IndependenceIsNotFree
  
  Hahaha. Where do you get this stuff? You need to visit Williamsburg, VA sometime, you could learn a little bit about US History.
- Terri
  
  Actually, history PROVES that most African slaves were sold by Tribal African Chieftons. These chiefs had captured prisoners from other tribes and sold them outright. Slavery still exists in both Africa and the Middle East Muslim nations.
  - Christopher Brandao
    
    Cite your sources. The fuck is wrong with people. Don’t say Google it. No dumbass cite your fucking sources. Google shows all results false ones too. Cite your information from reputable sources.
- Bobby English
  
  YO HAL,
  
  If the MUSLIM Arabs kept their male African slaves, the FIRST thing they did to them was to CASTRATE them!
  
  THINK ABOUT IT!
  
  All the African slaves that were sold to the WHITE slavers, were allowed to keep their “tackle” intact!
  
  And that is why we have so many blacks in AMERICA today and so few in SAUDI ARABIA!
- DavieGrohlton
  
  slaves were sold by African kings to European countries who in turn, sold the slaves to the American colonies. This was done so that the colonies could produce cheap labor to grow tobacco, cotton, and sugar to name a few. Those crops then funded the slave trade business that “white” people did not start when America was born…. Slavery is way older than that.
usmcpgw

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.

Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
- BJA
  
  I would take everything in that article with a huge grain of salt. If you google it you will see that most articles about the Irish slave trade reference the article by John Martin you posted, and not much else. The biggest part of the problem is that most Irish weren’t slaves, but indentured servants.
  
  Also, I notice that it mentions King James II and “his 1625 proclamation” which I find interesting since King James II wasn’t even born until 1633.
  - usmcpgw
    
    According to the African-American Chairman of President William Clinton’s Commission on Race, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin:
    
    again in 1619 the frist 20 Angolans who were captured by the Dutch who had attacked a Spanish ship….. were sold as………. SERVANTS!
    
    you are free to look up the historical documents from both Jamestown and the European records
    
    Also, I notice that it mentions King James II and “his 1625 proclamation” which I find interesting since King James II wasn’t even born until 1633.
    
    James II and VII (14 October 1633 O.S. – 16 September 1701) was King of England and Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685 …
    
    James II (16 October 1430 – 3 August 1460), who reigned as king of Scots from 1437 on, was the son of James I and Joan Beaufort.
    
    Name: King James II
    Full Name: James Stuart
    Born: October 14, 1633 at St. James Palace
    Parents: Charles I and Henrietta Maria
    Relation to Elizabeth II: 1st cousin 9 times removed
    House of: Stuart
    Ascended to the throne: February 6, 1685 aged 51 years
    Crowned: April 23, 1685 at Westminster Abbey
    Married: (1) Anne Hyde, (2) Mary, Daughter of Duke of Modena
    Children: Eight by his first wife Anne, of whom only Mary and Anne survived, and Five by his 2nd wife Mary of whom only a son James (Old Pretender) and Louise Maria survived.
    Died: September 6, 1701 at St Germain-en-Laye, France, aged 67 years, 10 months, and 21 days
    Buried at: Chateau de Saint Germain-en-Laye, Near Paris,
    Reigned for: 3 years, 10 months, and 3 days, Abdicated: December 11, 1688
    Succeeded by: his daughter Mary and son-in-law William of Orange
    
    there may be a typo……. but do you question the African-American Chairman of President William Clinton’s Commission on Race, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin:
    - David Reece
      
      They were sold, so they were not SERVANTS, but rather, SLAVES.
      - usmcpgw
        
        1) back then selling of prisoners was a common tactic
        2) wether a prisoner by crimes or war made no difference
        3) they served a period of time and were freed and given land
        4) bills of lading had the word servant
        5) the Irish …long before the first black African….were sold
        6) using todays definition for back then is arrogant
Keri Lynne Hays

Anthony Johnson was the first modern slave holder. Before him if you broke the law your punishment was to be an indentured servant; in a way it was similar to our prison systems. The courts would give you a time period to serve as an indentured servant, and after that you were to be released. Anthony Johnson felt he was better than that.
- BJA
  
  Hugh Gwyn was still the first “legal” slave owner, he was declared a slave for life 15 years before the Johnson case even happened. The Virginia Encyclopedia, The Library of Congress, History books, historians, and even the conservative news page “The Blaze” all list John Punch as the first slave by law.
  
  Also, looking over the transcripts of the Johnson case, the courts never even declared him a slave for life, they simply returned him to his indenture.
doctorivy

Johnson was the first slave owner. Previously the only way an indentured servant could serve for life was by committing a crime. John Punch attempted escape. Casor served his indentured sentence so he should have been set free with 50 acres. Johnson successfully sued his new employee (a white man, go figure) and won, relegating Casor to slave for life, and also (and this is the important part) changing previous law. But more to the point: How many American school kids even KNOW that blacks owned slaves? ALL school kids learn about slavery. They learn about how their nation is awful, and whites are awful. They don’t learn the truth, which is that as early as the 1600s blacks owned land and successful businesses. They learn about Nat Turner, not Madam C.J. Walker.
- BJA
  
  No, Hugh Gwyn was still the first “legal” slave owner, he was declared a slave for life 15 years before the Johnson case even happened. The Virginia Encyclopedia, The Library of Congress, History books, historians, and even the conservative news page “The Blaze” all list John Punch as the first slave by law.
  
  Also, looking over the transcripts of the Johnson case, the courts never even declared him a slave for life, they simply returned him to his indenture.
  - doctorivy
    
    Because he broke a law. He got the equivalent of a life sentence. The Johnson case set a precedent because it established that black indentured servants could, as of then, have their deal declared null and void (the master could renege). Casor broke no laws, he was simply denied his freedom when his indentured servitude was up. (Long after it was up.) But really, to quote our next president “What difference does it make?” Poll a group of school kids and 1,000,000 out of 1,000,000 will tell you that blacks didn’t own slaves.
    - JoeBeach
      
      The results of our abysmal liberal education system.
Hirightnow

Amazing that racists were able to find a picture of the guy 100+ years before photography was invented…
- Bryan Ventre
  
  So, one can not even attempt to correct the liberal BS we call history in public schools, without being labelled a racist, I guess you believe all the pictures of Jesus as blond hair and blue eyes were meant to be accurate as well lol
  - Hirightnow
    
    Read the article. (Notice that I didn’t say “again”…)
  - Jeff Harrington
    
    Good one! Thanks for being right on top of that bullshit reasoning. lol
  - Jim in Texas
    
    “I guess you believe all the pictures of Jesus as blond hair and blue eyes were meant to be accurate as well lol” This is a nice preventive dodge, but let’s try showing pictures of a dark middle eastern looking Jesus to the folks in the bible belt and see how many of them agree with you that these are more accurate.
    - MegMarkR1
      
      I’m from the Bible Belt (SE Alabama) and I, and most everyone I know knows that Jesus was not blonde hair and brown eyes (I’ve never seen Jesus portrayed in pictures as a child as having blue eyes). We all know, even in the Bible Belt, that Jesus was Jewish (not that there aren’t blonde hair Jews). And, FYI, Jewish doesn’t just denote “religion”. Jewish is also a ethnicity and not necessarily from the Middle East. Thanks for the stereotype.
      - GWS Jr.
        
        Well said and on point!
      - Say It Aint So
        
        Jesus was a hebrew, not jewish. The white people that killed The HEBREW were jewish edomites
  - FEDUPAmerican1
    
    If the have the correct history they can, but as the records and the story clearly bares out the myth that Johnson was the first slave owner in America is Bull Spit. And you are correct if one twist and distorts history to fit theur racist view points than yes they are a racist.
- Terri
  
  I absolutely believe that you are High. Right now.
  - Hirightnow
    
    Explain your reasoning? And your inability to spell.
    - Robert Jones
      
      They can spell fine. With all due respect Mr. Know-It-All, they were capitalizing your name (in the proper grammatical form per the context). It is you that misspelled your own name. Furthermore, “Right now.” is another statement. Therefore it comes after the period, and is also capitalized, explaining that you are “high”, “right now”.
      - Hirightnow
        
        You have no ideal who I am, or how I got the nickname I use (I’d say that it doesn’t mean what you think, but that would assume your ability to think). Oddly, that didn’t stop you from claiming to know more about me than I do.
        I bet you’d be fun at those parties nobody invites you to.
      - enviropal99
        
        “You have no ideal who I am” – I had a friend who only got to third grade who used “ideal” instead of “idea”. Funny!
      - Hirightnow
        
        You had friends?
        
        Look, I realize that this is the internet, and everybody lies, but you’re supposed to make them believable when you tell them.
- Robby Stevens
  
  Lol. Tell me about it.
- Danuis
  
  Wearing the fashion of 200 years after he died, too boot. I wonder who actually IS that black man, if he got a picture, he must had been of some renown. And now he’s being disrespected to further the cause of racists trying to save the iota of face they have left. Pathetic.
  - BJA
    
    Close, this guy died in the 1880’s
    
    this is not a picture of Anthony Johnson, but that of former slave and abolitionist from Massachusetts, Lewis Hayden
    http://nbhistoricalsociety.org/Important-Figures/lewis-hayden/
    - Hirightnow
      
      Ah! Thanks for that…TinEye wasn’t any help.
      (Oh, and pay no mind to Mr. English…he ain’t “right”.)
- Bobby English
  
  Slavery always existed in Africa as part of a social system but trade started with Arab raiders arriving around the 9th century to take Africans to markets in Mesopotamia, India, Persia and Arabia. In the 19th century slave trading was a flourishing commercial practice with regular and massive deportations organised by Arab slavershelped by local tribes such as the Nyamwezi who became their redoubtable partners. The most renowned Arab trader was Tippu Tip (Hemedi bin Muhammad el Marjebi), born in Zanzibar, who at 18 began slave and ivory trading between the interior and coastal towns, and by 1880he had built a large commercial empire between the Upper Congo, Lake Tanganyika and Bagamoyo on the coast, where the slaves were shipped-off to Zanzibar for sale to foreign merchants. In East Africa all the main routes, such as the above, lay in Tanganyika: a route in the North passed through Karagwe and North of Lake Victoria and divided to head north to Bunyoro and north-east towards Buganda. A less frequented routein the south exploited by the Yao, led from Lake Nyasa to Kilwa.
  
  The movement to abolish the slave trade started in England after publication of John Wesley’s Thought upon Slaveryin 1774 followed by Scottish economist Adam Smith’s work The Wealth of Nations published in 1776. The latter laid to rest once and for all the 200 year-old economic belief that slave labour was cheaper than free men’s work.
  
  It still took more than a century for Slavery to be totally abolished. The Moresby Treaty in 1822, the Hamerton Treaty in 1845 and finally on 5th June 1873 the treaty signed between the British Consul in Zanzibar, Sir John Kirk, and Sultan Barghash made slave trading illegal. By 1889 all former slaves were declared free men and the status of slave was abolished in 1907 in British East Africa. Compensation claims, the last step to offset the intricate human-economic impact brought about by the abolition, were not considered after 31 December 1911.
  
  In Tanganyika the status lasted another 15 years until the end of German
  rule when the country became a British Protectorate in 1922.
  - Hirightnow
    
    And this has what to do with the article?
    - Bobby English
      
      This has to do with educating ignoramuses like you!
      - Hirightnow
        
        So, nothing to say about a photo that can’t possibly exist. Just a rehash of African History that has nothing to do with the article.
        Got news for you: Slavery isn’t just Africans selling
        Africans.
      - Bobby English
        
        FAMILY PHOTOS OF YOU & BJA:
        
        · Up Your Alley
        2008 – zombietime
        
        Zombietime(DOT)com/up_your_alley_2008
        
        Up Your Alley 2008 N O T I C E Please Read Carefully
        You are about to view the zombietime report about the 2008 Up Your Alley
        Fair in San Francisco.
      - Hirightnow
        
        You’re banned from both Disney theme parks, aren’t you?
      - GW Sedberry Jr.
        
        Wow…it seems historical interpretation depends on which side you believe in. Bobby’s point is we didn’t start slavery, and black people owned slaves. Indisputable. However, Hirightnow (on da good bud) is also correct factually and morally – Americans did not start slavery, Africans did enslave their own, and we continued the practice until the 13th amendment was ratified. Slavery was technically legal as U.S. Law from about 1789 (we became a nation I believe) until 1865. Prior to that we were colonies, not America. Ok, but you know all this. I could care less about a damn picture being Hayden or Johnson – it’s arguing a benign fact that’s more about poor marketing. I think Bobby is trying, in his own way, to say he’s tired of people blaming white America for slavery and its fallout when history shows it was NEVER that cut and dry. My gripe is, as fast as we are erasing historical artifacts to alter history to a more politically correct version, soon kids only know the whitewashed version. Those who fail to study ACCURATE history are doomed to repeat it.
      - Robert Jones
        
        The country began in 1776. The Marine Corps started one year earlier, in 1775. OOH-RAH!
      - MegMarkR1
        
        GO NAVY! Established in Oct 1775, and the Marine Corps established a month later of the same year. Army was established in June 1775.
      - Madhorse
        
        The strong arm of the Navy. The USMC got a reputation of being first class killers on the high seas in ship to ship fighting. They loaded their muskets with buckshot and it was very effective. Brits learned that quite quickly.
        The USMC made the first amphibian assault during the Civil War 1865. Steam driven boats piloted by USN. Was very effective and caught the rebels off guard
        Then there is the leather collars in WWI trench warfare……..
        HM1
      - Glennfriend67
        
        Very well-said Big G! I would also like it taught that whites were being enslaved long, LONG before blacks ever were! Look what the Romans did to the Christians back in the First Century AD. (and yes, I still say BC and AD. That’s how it should be. None of this BCE and CE garbage). The vast majority of them were formerly Gentiles, and they would have been Caucasian. The Romans enslaved them, tortured them, beheaded them, crucified them….it was a hideous life. I notice that is basically erased from today’s textbooks, as well. Political correctness is the worst thing that ever happened to this country.
      - enviropal99
        
        You seem preoccupied with the photo. I guess a stick figure with a Black face would have been better. I wonder how they get pictures of all the Aztec rulers for history books?
      - Hirightnow
        
        You’re a special little camper,aren’t you? Yes you are. Yes you are!
        Who’s a special little camper? Who’s a special little camper?
- CelticBrewer
  
  Obviously it wasn’t the person pictured— because as you mentioned, there was no photography. However, the first slave owner in america WAS black. Maybe it’s not the guy pictured, but it still doesn’t change the meaning.
  - Hirightnow
    
    Didn’t read the article, did you?
- Jaiala
  
  I think it shows you to be the bigot when you so readily dismiss the possibility that the portrait was a painting, not a photograph. It doesn’t matter who it actually was so much as pointing out that you jump straight to accusation of invalidity based on an assumption that was not validated.
  
  Bigotry is the act of making generalized assumptions about a group of people based solely on characteristics said people may have. By claiming those who believe the “white slave owner bad, black slave owner benevolent” mantra to be revisionist history are inherently “racist” and hence everything stated by said people is fabricated, you are actually demonstrating the very behaviour you’re apparently protesting.
  
  Demonstrate that THIS element is fabricated; but don’t make such broad assumptions that show your underlying daemons.
  - Hirightnow
    
    The picture is actually Lewis Hayden.
    Anything else you know nothing about that you’d like to spout off about?
    - Jaiala
      
      You made an accusation without proof and paraded about the claim that the portrait could not exist due to photography when it was, in fact, an artistic rendering. It doesn’t matter who you discovered it was after the fact, but that you made a claim due to internal prejudices.
      - Hirightnow
        
        First off, the author of this article had already stated the identity of Mr. Hayden in a previous post.
        Secondly, I really do not care what prejudices were ingrained into your mind when you were(?) a child.
        Third, get the F*ck over yourself. Man up and say it proudly that you wish Africans were still slaves! You couldn’t possibly make people respect you any less.
      - Robert Jones
        
        Playing the race card because of disagreements is child’s play, no?
      - Hirightnow
        
        The article IS about race, Lumpy.
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        The picture is of another person completely. Tainting another person’s history isn’t correct. Good grammar doesn’t supply a superior logic. When you present a picture and state this is the man that was the first black slave owner. Make sure you don’t use a picture that actually is somebody else alltogether. You can’t claim 100% truth with false elements embedded, ever studied journalism and credibility? Now I simplified my grammar because fundamental logic and reasoning can be simplified. Make sure all elements are accurate, and if not leave it out. Idiot.
- Pax Humana
  
  Have you ever heard of the phrase “historical recreation,” you fucking dimwit?
  - Hirightnow
    
    Yes.
    Have you ever heard of the phrase “let’s use bullshit information to drive home a false point amongst mentally-deficient and impressionable racists in hopes of securing ourselves political power by pandering to the lowest common denominator, because facts are for people who think, and the one thing we don’t want people to do is think”?
    - Pax Humana
      
      Yes, I have heard about it and thank you for proving your own point and also proving that you are guilty of the words that you ironically thought were true about myself in your own life. Do you want a little cheese with your whine, Luciferian historical revisionist troll?
      - Hirightnow
        
        Keep your sky-father worship to yourself, barbarian.
  - yellow__umbrella
    
    Why is it that you trannies are so angry all the time?! Leave the boy alone.
    - Pax Humana
      
      First of all, I am not a boy and second, they are mad because I called their pathetic and obvious bluff. I honestly thought that you would have been smart enough to have figured that out right from the start, but I guess I was being too optimistic about the situation in my mind.
      - yellow__umbrella
        
        You and your tranny manifesto. Pax homo, try commenting on the topic at hand and not just promoting your own cross-dressing fetish everywhere.
Zach Peterson

So basically social media was right. The first owner of a slave (assumed for life as we define slavery now) was indeed by a black man. Too bad the writer couldn’t just say that, it’d save a lot of verbage.
- BJA
  
  No, the first slave owner is still not Anthony Johnson, not even legally, legally it’s still Hugh Gwyn, a white man.
  - JoeBeach
    
    No the first was a Native American enslaving a fellow Native American who lost in battle. Blacks need to get over thinking they are the only ones to ever have been slaves.
    - Warrior KM
      
      And people like you need to get over thinking that Black people think they were the only ones who were slaves.
- Warrior KM
  
  No one is this dumb. This guy was a slave, himself, in America. So please explain how a former slave was THE FIRST slave owner in America?
Dave Suchy

all permanent slaves prior to John Casor faced lifetime servitude as punishment of a crime. Casor had committed no crime. So that’s even worse, Johnson was the first man to have the courts strip a human of all his rights for selfishness and greed.
- BJA
  
  The case of John Casor wasn’t even a case against John Casor, it was Anthony Johnson vs Robert Parker, Johnson sued Parker for taking his servant, and the punishment was given to Parker, not Casor, and there is nothing in the case transcript saying that Casor was ever “punished” in any way, simply that he was returned Johnson as a servant.
  
  “This daye 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.) 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 as appeareth by the deposition of Captain Samuel Goldsmith and many probably circumstances. It is therefore the Judgment of the Court and ordered That the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of his said master Anthony Johnson, And that mr. Robert Parker make payment of all charge in the suit.”
  
  Northampton County Order Book 1655–1668, fol. 10; via Warren M. Billings, ed., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606–1689 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), P. 180–181.
Robert Hart

That is not a picture of someone from the 17th century. Those are nineteenth century clothes and a nineteenth century haircut.
Andrew Gimmi

It would be nice if i could read the article without that stupid facebook and twitter block in the way.Very annoying..
Me

ALSO it wasn’t America in the sense of it being the USA in the 1650’s. The was a British colony, Ruled by the King of England. making him a British slave owner.
Jason Petty

unfortunately this site is misleading. he was the first permanent slave that was not a result of punishment for some offense (like escape). all the known “slaves” traded before then were indentured servants that had a chance to pay or work off the “debt”. you want so bad to debunk this myth that you yourself mislead people. shame
- BJA
  
  You want so badly to be right, that you will keep adding things to make him first, what’s next, first person to made a slave by a court for non punishment reasons in virgina after lunch on a thursday?
  
  Also The case of John Casor wasn’t even a case against John Casor, it was Anthony Johnson vs Robert Parker, Johnson sued Parker for taking his servant, and the punishment was given to Parker, not Casor, and there is nothing in the case transcript saying that Casor was ever “punished” in any way, simply that he was returned Johnson as a servant.
  
  “This daye 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.) 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 as appeareth by the deposition of Captain Samuel Goldsmith and many probably circumstances. It is therefore the Judgment of the Court and ordered That the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of his said master Anthony Johnson, And that mr. Robert Parker make payment of all charge in the suit.”
  
  Northampton County Order Book 1655–1668, fol. 10; via Warren M. Billings, ed., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606–1689 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), P. 180–181.
- soctal
  
  Something wrong you cant read the last paragraph?
  
  “Technically Sir George Yeardley (White British aristocrat) was Governor of Virginia in 1619 and according to John Rolfe “About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. … He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, w[hich] the Governo[r] and Cape Merchant bought for victuall[s]. The year was 1619, and as an institution slavery did not yet exist in Virginia.””
8OOlbGorilla

Wait… Spanish conquistadors brought a variety of slaves (African and others) over to the new world in the 1500s. Wouldn’t they be the first slave owners in the Americas? Or are we exclusively talking about the first slave owner in the Colonies? Or in the United States (post revolution)? This argument/debate is fraught with ambiguity.
- Lora1972
  
  I think if we are going to be talking about America, then I think we should be talking post 1776…when we legally became our own country. Therefore, we actually owned slaves legally for what, 99 years? Which would be the Southern States. The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the South (those which weren’t freed by the South already, prior to the Proclamation), then those that were freed in the rest of the country (Northern States) by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. No man should OWN another. If he owes a man a debt, he should pay him, but the other man should never own his life or his family. However, this has been going on since the dawn of humanity and was not started in the United States and has not ended here nor will it. Other countries still practice this filth today, mainly a few that captured and sold their own to the people who were guilty of the slave trade here 150 years ago. And yes, more than just Africans were slaves in this country. Native Americans, Chinese, and Irish were among those labeled as slaves in this country as well….On whose backs do you think the Mighty Railroad came through? So, all of you can fight, argue, misconstrue facts, argue some more, and be mad at each other. Some of you can talk about how the world is and should be ashamed of The US. EVERY country on this planet has more than one thing it should be ashamed of and most of them are still doing those things that they should be ashamed of doing!! What this world needs to start doing is respecting each other and doing things for each other instead of criticizing and always putting each other down. I’m not talking about being politically correct either. That’s tearing our world apart. We need to be NICE. We need to clothe the poor, feed them, give shelter to those who need it, take care of the sick. Stop walking on by like it isn’t your business….See someone hungry, take him/her some food. May not make YOU feel good, but his/her stomach will have a better start at feeling that way. It only takes a minute to be nice. A second to smile.
Sim

It’s interesting how much argument there is over who held the first slave. It leads me to believe that this is misleading as well. I’m going to interject a third opinion: slavery was an undefined (well strictly speaking) thing for a long ass time and this is why there are multiple “firsts”
Bryan Ventre

It was a dutch flag on this ship true enough, but not a dutch ship, or merchant- the king of England at the time took a harsh stance towards PRIVATEERS which the captain was- so to be slick he flew a dutch flag yet he was in fact English- next- you claim slavery was not an institution until after the blacks arrived- the white Irish and English orphans were kidnapped and held their entire lives in the 10,000’s and when i say entire lives i mean many came at 8-10 years of age and only lived 1-2yrs in the tobacco fields the conditions were so horrible. Well before the blacks arrived the whites were therefore the 1st slaves. Johnson was the 1st granted by law therefore legally defined as a slave, and he won against a free white man no less.
- BJA
  
  He wasn’t the first under law either, that was John Punch as described in the article.
Cite your sources and have at

Racists trying to re-write history to their own liking again
Bob Harrison

Depends on what you define as America….If you look at America in the sense of the Colonies being under British Rule, than No he was not the first Slave Owner. HOWEVER, if you look at it in terms of the FIRST Colonist, the first new arrival, then indeed he was the first slave owner black or white! Perception and semantics at play!
- BJA
  
  No, indeed, he wasn’t the first slave owner in terms of Colonists, which by the way WAS under British rule. He wasn’t the first in the colonies, he wasn’t the first under British rule, he wasn’t the first under the USA, or the first under anything else.
  - Bob Harrison
    
    We will just have to agree to disagree then. When he sued for the rights to keep said person as “lifetime servitude,” that was the first time anyone white or black had done so in the colonies.Whether you want to call it lifetime servitude or slavery is immaterial. Depending on your perspective, and I realize you have yours and I have mine, and that is fine, they are both the same thing in my perspective.
    Again I realize you have your perspective and opinions as do I and that is fine. i hope we can keep this civil!
    - BJA
      
      He didn’t sue anyone for any rights to keep anyone. He sued his neighbor for stealing his indentured servant. Even if you somehow considered that suing to keep someone as a slave he still wouldn’t be the first slave owner even by law since John punch was made a slave by law 15 years prior.
  - GWS Jr.
    
    We weren’t formally recognized as a county until 1783. We only declared our independence in 1776 by the continental congress on Philly. Since everyone loves accuracy.
    - BJA
      
      Well, I guess if we’re going to use that as a goalpost, then we’d have a hard time deciding who the first slave owner in america was, since there was 700,000 slaves in America at that point.
      - GWS Jr.
        
        You get my point. I’ve seen more repetitive detail corrections on this post than any other it seems. Johnson wasn’t the first slave owner and yet his myth continued to perpetuate itself. But in keeping with the technically correct theme, there were many inaccuracies in slave population totals, so 700k is a source’s estimate? Drives you bonkers, doesn’t it? EXACT details aside, I do enjoy reading your responses because they’re intelligent, fact based, and articulate. People try to make this a simple and direct answer but the question has open parameters…. First Slave Owner in America… Start with the question of Slave. Slave being the general term used for indentured servants, etc or at the point our court system defined what a slave was and their role? There is a difference. Secondly, we were a British settlement in 1619 that evolved into the American colonies that became America, correct? So to me America would mean officially, not under British rule. I see people argue that indentured servants were this and that vs slaves, etc. Not one jackass on here lived back then and text can be found supporting just about any position, because human authors still have subjective minds like the rest of us. So yeah, we extrapolate the data as accurately as we can. There is no all or nothing when people make these statements except for there were slaves of various races on our soil and it was without question an atrocity on human lives. Outside of that, a little bit of everything is true. I’m not clear on Casor’s status in the Johnson victory. By that, I mean when his indentured servitude was altered to become lifetime slavery, was a new precedent set or a definition that defined status that could be used as legal precedent?
realtalk

This article is blatantly wrong…. He was the the first BLACK MAN TO OWN BLACK SLAVES not the very first slave owner in the USA DUMB. His lawsuit made it possible 15 years later for another law suit to use his case prior case law, and that case mad slavery for all people legal. You can even see the court documents.
- BJA
  
  This article, if you read the original image, is about the first slave owner, not the first black man to own another black man. So what case and court documents are you speaking of?
  - realtalk
    
    research for your self damn.. just search for HISTORICAL documents and his name… you will even seen a hand drawn picture of him, so yeah no photographs but people did paint and draw people. you can search congress library and state court records… they are all avaibale online…
Preston Wigginton

Well dumb ass America wasn’t founded till 1776 .. so your claim of 1619 is null and void
- BJA
  
  Well dumbass the United States of America wasn’t founded until 1776, but America was still here before that.
Conspiracy Cat

It doesn’t matter because the Captain of the Ship wasn’t a Colonial now was he… So which is hard fact or hard fiction? If he’s the Captain Man of War then he is Dutchman, right? What the author left out of this little piece of fluff is that these Africans were TRADED for supplies from another ship; they were not traded, bought, nor sold on colonial soil. Captain Jope’s journal can be found (in english) on Google Play Books. For the record, Johnson was the first slave owner but he did it for benevolent reasons.
- BJA
  
  Johnson wasn’t the first slave owner. Where did you find the part about him doing it for benevolent reason?
  
  Also they Africans were traded to the governor of Virginia, was that not colonial soil?
  - Conspiracy Cat
    
    Virginia was and still is a Commonwealth. As for the Governor “acquiring” the slaves, wasn’t brought up in what I read. They were traded for supplies for a ship. Maybe the Governor officiated the trade but I never read him obtaining them for his person slaves.
    - BJA
      
      The primary source of all of this discussion is from the letters of John Rolfe to Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the Virginia Company of London. It seems kind of strange that you have read about this topic at all and completely missed the primary source.
      
      “About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunnes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. They mett with the Treasurer in the West Indyes, and determined to hold consort shipp hetherward, but in their passage lost one the other. He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victualls (whereof he was in greate need as he pretended) at the best and easyest rates they could. He hadd a lardge and ample Commyssion from his Excellency to range and to take purchase in the West Indyes.”
      
      Author
      John Rolfe served as secretary and recorder general of Virginia (1614–1619) and as a member of the governor’s Council (1614–1622).
      
      Transcription Source
      The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 8. Virginia Records Manuscripts. 1606– 1737. Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed.,Records of the Virginia Company, 1606–1626, 3:241–242, 243–245, 247–248.
      - Conspiracy Cat
        
        I sit correct. Still doesn’t change the fact that Johnson was the first REGISTERED slave owner.
      - BJA
        
        And how do you figure he was the first “registered” slave owner? it’s not like you went down to the town hall and gave them five dollars for your registration.
Scott White

Amazing that there were portraits paintings and other things such as where they were able to copy someone’s likeness. Just as in we have pictures of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin long before the photograph was invented
TenHut!

Fact: Slavery happened in American.
Fact: America started with indentured servants. Africans were first treated as indentured servants along with Whites.
Fact: Both Blacks and Whites owned slaves.
Fact: Slavery was not unique to America and Africans are not the only ones who have been enslaved. Even Africa had slavery (though it was more like indentured servitude).
Fact: Often it was Africans who captured and turned over their own countrymen to the White slave traders.
Fact: A debate rages on about who owned the first slave when the sad fact is that it occurred in the first place with guilt to go around in both the races. The simple fact of participation in American slavery gives no one bragging rights for not being the first one to jump into the ring.
- ratherdrive
  
  Fact: The 1860 census tells us that there were 393,975 white slaveholders in America, and about 3700 black slaveholders. Which is to say that 99.89% of slaveholders were white, and .00939% were black; a statistically insignificant number.
  - TenHut!
    
    Bet those 3700 slaves felt mighty significant…
    - ratherdrive
      
      Probably not as much as the 3,950,528 slaves being “kindly” cared for by the white slaveholders.
      - TenHut!
        
        Black lives’ injustice then holds more significance when it is someone white doing the injustice?
        First let me make a correction to my earlier reply. I should have said that I bet the slaves of those 3700 black slave owners felt significant and I continue to stand by this statement. I would hope my life or condition would not be written off because of a statistic.
        But let us look at those numbers you gave. If you take the number of slaves whites owned and how many owned them, there seems to be an average of ten slaves to each white person. You did not give the number of slaves owned by the 3700 black owners but let’s estimate 2 apiece then that would give us 7400 slaves. The question is, how many whites were there total in the country and how many blacks were there (free and slave)? You look at that percentage (the percentage within a race who were slave owners)and it is probably higher for black slave owners since there were fewer blacks in the country.
        But again, we can crunch numbers for ages, the fact of the matter is that Africans were brought here and enslaved. Often it was Africans handing them over to the slave traders and then sold to slave owners, black and white. Each one of those slaves( whether white-owned or black-owned)mattered and were significant.
      - ratherdrive
        
        Its the statistical comparison that is insignificant, not the human beings. There really is no way to diminish the fact that 99.89% of the slaveholders in this Country were white.
        
        Nor any way to diminish the fact that slavery as a legal and economic institution would never have happened in THIS Country if American whites had not done the purchase transaction, regardless of who was doing the selling or kidnapping.
        
        Slavery in the rest of the tropical Americas where there was also a ready market, would still have happened, regardless of whether we embraced or rejected slavery, but slavery in our territory?…that’s all on us, the willing buyers.
  - Christopher Brandao
    
    Please cite your source so I can use as well. Thanks
    - ratherdrive
      
      Here it is, for the total number of slaveholders (not all were white, as I misspoke above).
      http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html
      
      Here is the cite for the 3700 total of black slaveholders (page 370)
      https://books.google.com/books?id=Qq2eoGdnHsYC&pg=PA370#v=onepage&q&f=false
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        You think they actually kept accurate records back then? You cant be fucking serious bro.
      - ratherdrive
        
        Serious as a MoFo heart attack, bro. The basic purpose of those statistics was to determine the amount of voting power each State had in Congress. All “interests” in the Country paid close attention to census accuracy to make sure that no State got any more or any fewer Congressmen than they were entitled to. A very big deal, indeed.
        
        Was it a perfect result? Of course not; no census ever is. But it was an excellent effort, at least as good as anything we can do today.
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        you are a damn fool. with the technology now and tracking of social security state IDs and ton of other shit now, still the census is not even accurate. of course it never perfect. but if you think that this day and age its not accurate what the fuck on gods Green earth do you think that shit is accurat 300 years ago. your intellect is fucking pathetic. what the fuck makes you think the congressman wanted total accuracy. back then they write down any fucking number and there was nothing else to fucking back that number up. they didn’t have IDs or anything so what the fuck makes you think they couldn’t have fucked up that entire system if they wanted to. what the fuck makes you think some slave owner always wanted the everybody to know exactly how much slaves he had.
        
        you are an absolute moron if you actually believe that those census stats from hundreds of years ago was accurate or the census from before America gained its independents. anybody could move to a new state and live under a totally different fucking name because there was no central database of fucking anything really.
        
        even with current history there is shady shit going on but your fucking idiotic self swears that those “statistics” were good enough. as if all the white people admitted to be slave owners with the closer the war got.
        
        put it this way idiot. if I was a white slave owner back in the days I would easily bribe OR merely ask the man doing the census to put me down as a black slave owner just so I can fuck with all the Black’s mind when they see the results and think there is a black man slave owner out there.
        
        just that simple fucking scenario right there has the probability of being true since they loved brain washing there slaves. you are a fucking idiot. I’m done.
        
        the fucking accuracy of everything more than 100 years ago is far from accurate but your dumb ass swears all that shit is accrurate from the moment slavery started on this american land.
      - ratherdrive
        
        So, tell me, you sweet-talking charmer you, just exactly how accurate does a statistic have to be to please your discerning tastes?
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        it doesn’t have to be 100% but it should be backed by a low probability of being falsified for any reason due to any personal interest of an individual or party “recording” (by hand and subjective perspective) said statistic.
        
        Like today the census might be anywhere from 90 to 99 % accurate in america. because State IDs. hospital central database. social security database so on an so forth. all of those required elements of a us citizen. state documents etc. all of those things should support the census that are taken today. it a obviously won’t account for illegal immigrants but at least we have enough technology and requirements of those technologies ( like the social security system) to be pretty accurate or good enough. we can’t account form all homeless and shit but that is good enough because logically you can’t have perfect census but 90% and up is pretty damn good and logically useful.
        
        300 years or so ago. hell to the fuck no. I could be john smith in boston and got to Florida and be Tim fuckard. and 300 years ago It would be that easy for just one man to cause a ripple in the accuracy of that count never mind fucking slave owners that have more of a reason to lie than not to
      - ratherdrive
        
        Not sure you will want to hear this, but the modern method of taking the census is by MAIL. As backup, they still use personal interviews when called for; the homeless population gets counted this way. None of the other statistical sources you mention affect the count at all. Illegal immigrants also get counted.
        
        The slave owners of most of the slaves in the South belonged to a small, very rich group of plantation owners, the top 1% of the day, the wealthiest people in the whole Country. Because of their wealth, these are the people who basically controlled the Southern politicians, and told them what to do. And protecting slavery, which was the basis of the cotton economy in the South, was what they wanted to be sure of.
        
        The only way to protect slavery was to have the most votes in Congress.
        
        And the only way to maximize the votes they had in Congress was to have the highest population possible, since that’s how we determine how many Congressmen each State gets.
        
        The only way to get a high population count was to count every single slave that they had, as only 3/5s of THAT total could be counted. It was to their benefit to make that number as high as possible in order to control the government as much as possible.
        
        This is the opposite of their behavior when it came time to pay any property tax on the slave property they owned. In that case, it was not unusual to hide slaves as much as possible.
        
        If any cheating was to be done, it all depended on what their motives were, as to which direction they cheated in. But remember, the count was visual and in person for the whole Country. Bribery would be the only way to twist the result. Did some bribery occur? No one knows, but its safe to assume there was at least some.
        
        If you think the accuracy in 1860 was any less than the 90% figure you mentioned, its up to you you to support that assertion,
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        Oh my god you still dont get it no shit its done by mail. Im merely stating that they have the resources to cross reference the results if they wanted to. Cuz like i said somebody can fill iut the mail incorrectly. And sorry to tell you this. But the homeless are homeless so that count will never be accurate. You cant count on a homeless crackhead to be where you want them to be when it comes time to count them. You are fucking hilarious bro. Its like you use no logic or original thought to help you process the shit you seem to like to read.
        
        It is not up to me to support that assertion. All i needed to do was to present a probability that it is less accurate than 90% or even 75% for that matter. I dont need to prove my doubt in something that has no supported information.
        
        The second yo last paragraph you wrote “If any cheating…” all of that is subjective shit you just typed doesnt really account for shit. You need to prove to me beyond the doubts that i raised, that your findings are absolutely accurate.
        
        You subjectiviely interjected your own thoughts of why and when they would cheat. As if those are the only ways and reasons why they would. Like you said “highest population possible” what makes you think they had no reason to exaggerate that number at all.
        
        I am not unterjecting i am merely presenting possibilities that are well withing the probability of being happening. You make it seem like they only had a reason to lie when it came to taxes but no reason to lie when it came to congress and votes and shit.
        
        Bro. They could have lied to say they had 200 slaves and the next sor guy had 400 slaves and he was a black master. They could have put anything to give them an upperleg in congress. Like you said they had to maximize the votes. What better way to do that then to lie that you have more master and slaves than what was actually there.
        
        But you dont see that. Mind you, all of what im saying is not subjective. But your second to last paragraph was. Trying to guess the only reason why they would cheat. Its all just probablility i have been stating because you yourself and any other historian will never be able to produce enough evidence (other than hand written or typed documents) to prove that those stats or census were not ever capable of being falsified because there was no. Central database type of system in place like ( social security, state IDs or etc) to cross refrence them and validate them.
        
        If i put some really fucked up number in the census mail that doesnt match up with other legal shit like I.R.S or Social secutiry. Im pretty sure in this day and age they would come visit my house to see why shit aint adding up. They have to much shit to cross reference today but way back then they had nothing but easily forged hand writen or possibly typed up shit.
      - ratherdrive
        
        Census gets the count on their own ticket; they don’t get data from any other source.
        
        Good lick, Chris.
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        any historical document is to only be taking into consideration. seeing as how easy it could be to fake anything back then. it is absolutely stupid to say anything happened exactly as scripted on some old paper. any documents from hundreds of years ago can say anything that damne writer wanted it to say. could be some mental but case that wrote some story and forged that document. and we wouldn’t really know the fucking difference.
        
        now a days there is video proof digital trails ( because computers are objective and subjective like the human mind) and bunch of other elements in play that make it very hard to fake a bunch of shit.
        
        stop reading bullshit and pretend like its your original thought. you are just regurgitating shit from a writer you don’t know with all those damn history documents. that’s just memoru recall. focus on the philosophy and logistics of all probabilities and the reality of limitations or lack thereof.
      - ratherdrive
        
        I gather you have a better source of information on this question. Can you post a link? Or at least describe it in some detail?
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        I don’t need a source for my philosophy idiot its my… damn.. philosophy backed by logic and the logic of how shit happens today and how easy it was to lie about shit in documents centuries ago. i just told you to stop and think for yourself and NOT just be a memory recall, repeating shit you read. witout using your own intelect to determine shit. history repeats itself right? if peolle today in this modern fucking day are still trying to falsify documents and shit what the fuck makes you think that centuries ago when it was Ssssoooooo much easier to do that, that they were not doing that way back then. what? you think falsifying documents is only a new thing we humans started a few yeara ago? get the fuck out of hear. lol
        
        with the level of difficulty it is to falsify shit today and the human being still finds a way to try and do it. what the hell makes you think that 300 years ago, when it was a thousand percent easier to fake shit, what makes you think that all of a sudden back then the human being was not capable of such wrong doing.so we humans are only capable of falsifying shit today but not years ago? come on bro. I’m argueing the logic and philosophy of how we should process what has happend in the past. yes you can read all that shit but don’t let those writers think for you. no. you need to think for yourself and use the world you live in now as a baseline for what may have transpired in the past.
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        even if you consider the new variables of the internet and social media. humans still interact and lie in particular manors
      - ratherdrive
        
        So, I take that as a “no, you don’t have a better source.”
        
        But you feel free to attack the source I offered to you, on the basis of…. you dislike it, for some reason. And nothing else.
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        Its not because i dont like it. There is nothing to prove your source is absolutely accurate. The documents you are talking about may very well exist. But there is no video fucking proof or central data base of some sort that could corroborate any documents from the past. Not 1000 years ago and not even 300 years ago.
        
        I presented a philosophy you dumb fuck. I did not present a statistical certainty. I only presented a probability, doubts that challange any past document (before things like social security and etc. Existes) do to the fact that it may have logically happened. And there is no proof to prove that my possibilities did not happen.
        
        I told your idiot self to use the present day as a baseline for what may have happend in the past (human nature to do shit right or wrong. By cheating an so on)
        
        Just like the court rooms of today. Can you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that any and all documents from…lets say before 1900s. Can you prove that all of those documents are absolutely accurate? Do you have any video source or central database that was required for all citizens of america and preamerica that the governement could have use to solidify their census results and stats? (like S.S. and IDs. Etc)
        
        No all you have is a fucking reference that was typed up by some human stating that this document existed and was true. But yet you have nothing else from history that can prove those documents to be absolutely true. And the reason why is because nothing existed 300 years ago that could rule out human error, wrong doing, or subjective interpretations.
        
        Stop asking me for a fucking reference on my philosphy you sound fucking stupid. All references are only backed by logics and findings. And your reference doesnt have enough findings to support it as 100% or even 90% accurate.
        
        In simpleton language…you show reference to a document. I say how can you proove that to be accurate and not falsified? And your reseponse is because they didnt have a reason to cheat those numbers???
        
        Motherfucka ….did you live 300 years ago. How the fuck do you know and not know their reason from falsifying or not falsifying any documents.
        
        I presented a possibility of wrong doing BECAUSE THERE IS NO PROOF THAT WRONG DOING WASNT POSSIBLE.
      - ratherdrive
        
        You should really consider getting some help Chris.
        
        Seriously.
        
        Bye, bye.
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        I love that rebuttal. Just keep regurgitating shit you read and keep failing on processing it and thinking for yourself.
        
        The philosophy I presented to you went so over your fucking head, you suggest that I get some help. Lmfao. Repeating a encyclopedia will not give you a High I.Q. buddy. Repeating what is written in a documents is not the same as you stating your own theories or conclusion based of of multiple findings.
        
        You were just plagiarizing the thoughts of other writers and passing them off as if they were absolute fact. no the only facts in your sources is that the documents existed. the insinuating topics of those documents can’t be proven anymore. because this is now hundreds of years after the fact.
        
        I understood everything in your argument. I asked you for your philosophy on how record keeping could have possibly been completely accurate in a time where the technology or logistics didn’t excist and your response is I need help?
        
        You need help! Try that passive aggressive tactic on someone dumber than you.
        
        I am the creator of my philosophy my sources were in all of my responses. My argument is contingent on the fact there was no way to prove hand written or manually typed documents were accurate, and those inaccurate forms of record keeping were the only forms of record keeping. Therefore how would I produce an accurate source from the 1700s if it did NOT exist?
        
        My proof is that you have no proof of accuracy. get it now dumb fuck?
        
        don’t think for a second that you can just say your little bye and I would not say my piece.
        
        Now I will say Bye.
        
        P.S.How about you try some thinking for your own and not just reading someone else’s thoughts. Praising someone else’s ability to think and write but you yourself refuse to even try and think and process what you read is idiotic. But oh well…..
      - ratherdrive
        
        You have one of the most interesting viewpoints on history that I have ever seen. Totally asinine, but interesting.
      - Christopher Brandao
        
        Foolish would be your logic. To think that history written in documents with little to know physical
Aaron

What does one black slave owner or, a handful of black slave owners compared to the whole South being guilty of owning slaves with the inhumane treatment of slaves that was common practice. At the end of the day it was wrong.
- GWS Jr.
  
  The whole South didn’t own slaves. I stopped reading anything after that statement because the rest is probably fictitious, too.
chowder

So the article is mixing ‘indentured servants’ with slaves.?
- BJA
  
  Considering that John Punch started out as an indentured servant, and became a slave, I’m not quite sure what you are confused about.
chowder

Most people, Irish or British or anything, came to America on a ticket purchased with their promise to work so many years to pay it off. These Indentured Servants made up 60% of the immigrants. The court case above was the first one where the indentured servants were made slaves and a black man owned the slaves.
- BJA
  
  I’m going to rewrite the article to make it more clear but the court case above says that in 1640, John Punch, an indentured servant, was legally made the slave of Hugh Gwyn, a white man.
  
  Making Hugh Gwyn (a white man) the first legal slave owner.
  
  Also at first most people came as indentured servants, eventually it was mostly African slaves.
y2k8

It’s fun to read a history lesson that begins with,”I took some assumptions.” Certainly hope the rest of the information didn’t come from ppl who made assumptions as well bc frankly you weren’t there to know how accurate ANY of this is.
- BJA
  
  The assumptions are taken on the original image since it doesn’t specify exactly what it’s intent is but you can assume what they meant by America.
  
  While you are right we we’re not there,all of the references are primary sources (people who where there)
Terri

There are portraits (painted of Anthony Johnson) existing as it was quite usual for landowners to have portraits of themselves. Johnson WAS the First BLACK to own slaves in America. He also successfully SUED to hold slaves (Casor). You article that “debunks” the “myth” actually reaffirms the veracity of the story / meme.

I shall also bring gently to your attention that it was NORTHERN ship owners that regularly sailed to the African Coast to purchase slaves from Tribal Leaders (Black Africans) and bring them to America. Northern states PURCHASED cotton, fruit, naval stores (pine pitch, timber, etc), bird feathers (for mens and womens fashions of the day), cattle, and more from the so-called ‘slave states’ thus fully participating in the slave trade.

As much as you might want the Civil War (the War of Northern Aggression) to be about slavery, history proves otherwise. Less than 4% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 96% did not. Slaves were on big sugar and cotton plantations. The Cotton Gin and other inventions of the Industrial Revolution were making slavery obsolete and expensive. Most slave owners had stopped purchasing slaves by 1861 and many were freeing their slaves outright.

The war was then, and remains, an issue of States Rights. An issue still unresolved as the Federal Government over-steps its boundaries as dictated in the Constitution of the United States. Federal over-reach has become untenable. States today are declaring their displeasure and are, in fact, pushing back against this encroachment.

As to “banning” flags, taking down and destroying monuments, erasing and eradicating symbols of one’s culture, heritage, and history: these are the tools of tyrants. Hitler, Stalin, Slobodan Milosevic, and now, the Taliban and ISIS have done this. It’s called ethnic and cultural cleansing.

Don’t be a party to this here. Remember, if they come for me and my history, heritage, culture, and symbols of the same — they may well come after you and yours tomorrow.
- BJA
  
  The article reaffirms that John Punch, not John casor was the first legal slave owner, his case was 15 years prior.
  
  Not that we were talking about the civil war, but the north fought the war to preserve the union and the south fought to preserve slavery.
  
  You might want the civil war to be about everything but slavery but you’d be wrong.
  
  Go read the comments by southern politicians such as the president and the causes of secession. The only states rights they fighting over was states rights to own slaves.
  
  Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson and Civil War Historian writes that, “The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries.”
  - Terri
    
    John Casor was THE SLAVE not the slave owner. Your “history” is skewed if not completely wrong.
    
    Robert E Lee: (On the Union), “All that the South has ever desired was that the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth.”
    
    Abraham Lincoln: (On the Civil War and Slavery), “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.” – August 22, 1862 – Letter to Horace Greeley
    
    I am am Historian. I’ve spent the last 40 years studying history. I live in Savannah, Ga. I have spent countless hours in pursuit of the truth of the Civil War. I do not defend the practice of slavery nor do I condone it. It was then, and is now, abhorrent in any form.
    
    Revisionist ‘history’ is equally abhorrent. It is anathema to the truth of the events that lead to the Civil War. That war was fought not to preserve slavery but to preserve the rights GUARANTEED to the States by both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States. The same rights that are being lost now to an over-reaching Federal Government that turns a blind eye to the very laws by which it should abide.
    
    I urge you to remember: “Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana). They condemn the rest of us to repeat it with them.
    - BJA
      
      Yes I meant John punch was the first slave not owner. Also if you have been researching this for 40 years and still think slavery had nothing to do with it you have wasted 40 years.
      
      I’m aware of what Lincoln said which is why I said the north didn’t fight over slavery (at first at least)
      - Terri
        
        I never said slavery had nothing to do with it. The North used slavery as an excuse to go to war to bring the Confederacy back to the union. That, sir, is common knowledge. The Southern States seceded from the Union to protect their Constitutional Rights to govern themselves.
        
        I am very sorry that your knowledge of Civil War history is incomplete.
        
        I am not going to to answer you again. Your lack of historical context and understanding makes it impossible to discuss the issue further.
        
        Have a safe, happy, enjoyable weekend.
      - BJA
        
        While you are certainly welcome to your opinion, until I see proof of anything that will change my mind (not just opinions) I will continue to believe the Civil War documents, speeches, historians, and my own research.
      - Third Bedrock
        
        I’m not sure how you come to that conclusion, since South Carolina, the first state to secede, wanted the federal government to intervene regarding other states’ non-compliance with the Fugitive Slave Act.
        
        If a state that didn’t comply with that Act still had a constitutional right to govern itself, how did SC justify demanding federal intervention?
Jacob Blaustein

It was mentioned here: http://www.dailystormer.com/hidden-facts-about-slavery-in-america/
Anthony M.

Yeah irish was slaves, but was there an irish save trade, was ships going into Ireland getting ship loads irish people for monetary gain, show me in America alone, where irishs was almost slaves in America for almost 400 yrs, irish slavery was the law of the land,freed from slavery and reconstruction era for irishs,dehumanized, lynched, brutally murder by white mobs, denied education, police brutality, separate water fountains, restrooms, lunch counters, marching for civil rights, just denied the basic standards for living because they were irishs, you got irishs people in racist groups , let’s be for real, mistreatment of any race of people is wrong, but you can never compare irish so called slavery to black slavery, never ,their is no comparison, even if you try too, the genocide of one race the natives to the enslavement of another, the black race in America.
- GWS Jr.
  
  Man, is this a pissing contest? It hasn’t been 400 years since 1619 yet, and since you stated in America, you do know when we became a country, right? 1783 when we are officially recognized by foreign powers? Ring a bell? 234 years is just a bit over half of the 400 you like to use to win your pissing contest. Why is it black people want America to acknowledge the atrocities of slavery against blacks but never seem to mention other races enslaved alongside? Why is it the Chinese were brought over so much later as slave labor and treated like shit, yet became a very successful race here in a little over 100 years time? You said y’all had 400 years total, but we will just use 150 years. Why are the Chinese more successful? Irish were still thought of as trash at the beginning of the 20th century. You also cast dispersions about the Irish as skinheads and KKK. Can I say for sure NO Irish ever joined? No one can. But you just lumped them in there. Do you even know what an Irish skinhead represents?? They’re not German, I.e. Aryan. Read a little, just get off the first 3 pages of Google.
Ralph459

Don’t know if anyone has written this thus far.. The first Photo was in 1826 by a French man.. The pic in the meme is that of Lewis Hayden.. An escaped slave and one of the top abolitionists of his time.. Hayden was also Grand Master for the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts… So someone needs to do a littl fact checking.. This meme has been making it’s rounds…
- Ralph459
  
  http://nbhistoricalsociety.org/Important-Figures/lewis-hayden/
- BJA
  
  Thanks for pointing this out, I’ll mention it in the expanded re-write/reformat I am working on.
Marie Rebel Yell Rodriguez

SLAVERY in NEW YORK

Systematic use of black slaves in New Netherland began in 1626, when the first cargo of 11 Africans was unloaded by the Dutch West India Company.

The company had been founded in 1621, and it “operated both as a commercial company and as a military institution with quasi-statelike powers.”[1] The company had tried its colonial experiment of New Netherland at first with agricultural laborers from Holland, but this plan went nowhere. Most of the Dutch who came to America sought to pile up money in the lucrative fur trade and then hurry back to the comforts of Holland to enjoy their wealth. So the company increasingly turned to slaves, which it already was importing in vast numbers to its Caribbean colonies.

From the 1630s to the 1650s, the WIC “was unquestionably the dominant European slave trader in Africa.”[2] In 1644 alone, it bought 6,900 captives on the African coast. Most of these went to the company’s colonies in the West Indies, but from its stations in Angola, the company imported slaves to New Netherland to clear the forests, lay roads, build houses and public buildings, and grow food. It was company-owned slave labor that laid the foundations of modern New York, built its fortifications, and made agriculture flourish in the colony so that later white immigrants had an incentive to turn from fur trapping to farming.

But private settlers still faced an acute shortage of agricultural labor that was retarding the colony. A company audit report noted that, “New Netherland would by slave labor be more extensively cultivated than it has hitherto been, because the agricultural laborers, who are conveyed thither at great expense to the colonists sooner or later apply themselves to trade, and neglect agriculture altogether.”[3]

As a result, the West India Company relaxed its monopoly and allowed New Netherlanders to trade their produce to Angola and “to convey Negroes back home to be employed in the cultivation of their lands.” The company was willing to forego profit for the sake of spreading slavery in New Netherlands and getting the colony settled. It even allowed private owners to exchange slaves they were dissatisfied with for company slaves.

But only a trickle of slaves flowed into New Netherland from Angola; the colonists found the Africans “proud and treacherous,” and preferred to seek “seasoned” slaves from the West Indies, specifically Cura�ao. In addition to those they bought from the West Indies, Dutch settlers bought slaves seized by privateers from Spanish ships. The steady flow from various sources allowed the colony to stabilize and, by 1640, to expand its agricultural output. “Slavery helped to prepare the way for this transition by providing the labor which made farming attractive and profitable to the settlers. Slave labor was especially important in the agricultural development of the Hudson Valley, where an acute scarcity of free workers prevailed.”[4]

Between 1636 and 1646 the price of able-bodied men in New Netherland rose about 300 percent. By 1660, slaves from Angola were selling for 300 guilders and those from Cura�ao for about 100 guilders more. By the time the British took over the colony in 1664, slaves sold in New Amsterdam for up to 600 guilders. This was still a discount of roughly 10 percent over what they would have brought in the plantation colonies, but the West India Company had been subsidizing slavery in New Netherland to promote its economic progress. The Hudson Valley, where the land was monopolized in huge patroon estates that discouraged free immigration, especially relied on slaves.

The purely economic status of slaves in New Netherland contrasted with the malignant and sometimes bizarre racism of the religious British citizens who followed the Dutch into the north Atlantic colonies. Free blacks in New Netherland were trusted to serve in the militias, and slaves, given arms, helped to defend the settlement during the desperate Indian war of 1641-44. They were even used to put down the Rensselaerswyck revolt of white tenants. Blacks and whites had coequal standing in the colonial courts, and free blacks were allowed to own property (Jews, however, were not). They intermarried freely with whites and in some cases owned white indentured servants.

Slaves who had worked diligently for the company for a certain length of time were granted a “half-freedom” that allowed them liberty in exchange for an annual tribute to the company and a promise to work at certain times on company projects such as fortifications or public works. Individual slaveowners, such as Director General Peter Stuyvesant, adopted this system as well, and it enabled them to be free of the cost and nuisance of owning slaves year-round that they could only use in certain seasons. For the slaves, half-freedom was better than none at all.

BRITISH RULE

The British took over in 1664, and control of the colony passed to the Duke of York, who, with his cronies, held controlling interest in the Royal African Company. The change of name from New Netherland to New York brought a crucial shift in policy. Whereas the Dutch had used slavery as part of their colonial policy, the British used the colony as a market for slaves. “The Duke’s representatives in New York — governors, councilors, and customs officials — were instructed to promote the importation of slaves by every possible means.”[5]

From 1701 to 1726, officially, some 1,570 slaves were imported from the West Indies and another 802 from Africa. As it had under the Dutch, the colony continued to import relatively few slaves from Africa directly, except occasional cargoes of children under 13. The actual numbers were much higher, because smugglers made liberal use of the long, convoluted coast of Long Island. In some years illegal shipment of slaves on a single vessel outnumbered the official imports to the whole colony.

As a result, New York soon had had the largest colonial slave population north of Maryland. From about 2,000 in 1698, the number of the colony’s black slaves swelled to more than 9,000 adults by 1746 and 13,000 by 1756. Between 1732 and 1754, black slaves accounted for more than 35 percent of the total immigration through the port of New York. And that doesn’t count the many illegal cargoes of Africans unloaded all along the convoluted coast of Long Island to avoid the tariff duties on slaves. In 1756, slaves made up about 25 percent of the populations of Kings, Queens, Richmond, New York, and Westchester counties.

Slaveholding concentrated in New York City, where by 1691 competition from slave labor had driven white porters out of the market houses and where by 1737 free coopers were complaining of “great numbers of Negroes” working in their trade.The slave trade became a cornerstone of the New York economy. As with Boston and Newport, profits of the great slave traders, or of smaller merchants who specialized in small lots of skilled or seasoned slaves, radiated through a network of port agents, lawyers, clerks, scriveners, dockworkers, sailmakers, and carpenters.
The Dutch legacy left its mark on New York slavery, even after the British occupation. The British at first handled slaves in New York on the same relatively humane terms the Dutch had set. The population already was racially mixed, and slavery in New York at first was passed down not exactly by race, but by matrilineal inheritance: the child of a male slave and a free woman was free, the child of a female slave and a free man was a slave. By the 18th century, through this policy, New York had numerous visibly white persons held as slaves.
But after 1682, as the number of slaves rose (in many places more rapidly than the white population) fears of insurrection mounted, restrictions were applied, and public controls began to be enacted. By that year, it had become illegal for more than four slaves to meet together on their own time; in 1702 the number was reduced to three, and to ensure enforcement each town was required to appoint a “Negro Whipper” to flog violators. In a place where slaves were dispersed in ones and twos among city households, this law, if enforced, would have effectively prohibited slaves from social or family life.
Local ordinances restricted times or distance of travel. Slave runaways were tracked down rigorously, and ones bound for French Canada were especially feared, as they might carry information about the condition and defenses of the colony. The penalty for this was death. Slaves did run off, especially young men, but they tended to gravitate to New York city, rather than Canada. There many of them sought to escape the colony by taking passage on ships, whose captains often were not overly scrupulous about the backgrounds of their sailors.

“Others skulked along the waterfront, where they were drawn into gangs of criminal slaves infesting the docks. The most notorious gang was the Geneva Club, named after the Geneva gin its members were fond of imbibing. There were also groups known as the Free Masons, the Smith Fly Boys, the Long Bridge Boys, and many others whose names have not been recorded. Slaves belonging to such gangs were extremely clannish and often engaged in murderous feuds. Only rarely, however, did they attack white persons. The very existence of such groups nevertheless caused the whites much anxiety. The authorities regarded them as a much greater threat to the public safety than the deadlier gangs of white hoodlums on the waterfront.”
In 1712, some slaves in New York City rose up in a crude rebellion that could have been much more deadly, had it been better planned. As it was, it was among the most serious slave resistances in American history, and sparked a vicious backlash by the authorities. The revolt was led by African-born slaves, who decided death was preferable to life in bondage. They managed to collect a cache of muskets and other weapons and hide it in an orchard on the edge of town. On the night of April 6, twenty-four of the conspirators gathered, armed themselves, and set fire to a nearby building. They then hid among trees, and when white citizens rushed up to put out the blaze, the slaves opened fire on them, killing five and wounding six.
The surviving citizens sounded the alarm. Every able-bodied man was pressed into service, and appeals were made to governors of surrounding colonies. The militia pinned down the rebels in the woods of northern Manhattan. The leaders of the uprising committed suicide, and the rest, starving, surrendered.
The death toll in the 1712 uprising doesn’t seem high, but in a New York county that, at that time probably numbered some 4,800 whites, it was shocking. In considering the psychological impact on the survivors, imagine some sort of attack on modern New York, with its 8 million people, that would leave casualties of 10,000 dead.
A special court convened by the governor made short work of the rebels. Of the twenty-seven slaves brought to trial for complicity in the plot, twenty-one were convicted and put to death. Since the law authorized any degree of punishment in such cases, some unlucky slaves were executed with all the refinements of calculated barbarity. New Yorkers were treated to a round of grisly spectacles as Negroes were burned alive, racked and broken on the wheel, and gibbeted alive in chains. In his report of the affair to England, Governor Hunter praised the judges for inventing ‘the most exemplary punishments that could be possibly thought of.’
As in other Northern colonies, blacks in New York faced special, severe penalties for certain crimes.
Havoc Dog

The first record of a LEGALLY owned slave was in 1654 when John Casor was declared property for life by the court of Virginia. He was owned by Anthony Johnson. FACT. This means that legally speaking as a state institution it was a Black man who owned the first SLAVE (up until that time they did have indentured servants but no legally held slaves). This is based on actual court records. Of course you could find plenty of instances of slavery among the Native Americans before and after, as you would among the tribes of Africa, and I’m sure there were people treated as slaves by Europeans in the Americas but without the writ of law. Legally speaking Casor was the first and his owner was indeed black and ex-indentured servant himself.
- BJA
  
  Do you always reply without reading first? John Casor wasn’t the first legal slave by at least 20 years
  - Havoc Dog
    
    As I said this fact is based on actual court records and as yet I haven’t seen anything that overturns that established historical account.
MC

Anthony Johnson was black, the census reports him as, “Negro”. A lot of blacks owned slaves in America. That’s just an empirical verifiable fact. Try not to change historical facts.
- BJA
  
  He was black, never said he wasn’t, so what’s your point? I wouldn’t say a “lot” of blacks owned slaves, at best guess around 3000 blacks owned slaves in the South. Which facts exactly are being changed?
Cathy

The answer to the original question, “Was the first slave owner a Black Man?” was not answered as far as I can tell.
I had a wonderful Social Studies teacher in high school and he was black. He was the very first person I heard say that an actual black man began slavery and became very wealthy selling slaves to other countries.
I don’t think anyone is answering the ultimate question, either because they don’t want to or they don’t know the answer.
In the meantime, this has caused so much racism and of no fault of the “white man,” but of a man who saw an opportunity to become rich who just happened to be black.
I don’t think, by any means, that this was humane or proper. I think if a person is looking for work and to earn money to live and survive and they decide to take care of someone’s grounds, work in their fields, clean someone’s house or cook their meals, etc., it is an honest job. However, those workers should not be mistreated or forced to do anything against their will. They should be shown respect.
It is not okay to “purchase” a person, mistreat them, demand of them, overwork them, abuse them in any way, or think that they are inferior to the “purchaser.”
So, if white people or any other race mistreats another, that is absolutely WRONG! Not ALL PEOPLE abused and owned black slaves. My family came here from another country in the mid 1900’s, and never owned slaves or had maids or servants, yet I am classified as “white” and looked at with anger by many “black people” as if I am classified with this group that owned slaves. Just as every black person in this country does not necessarily have ancestors who were slaves.
There is no need to differentiate any race, especially in this day and age nor acknowledge and keep the anger going. Why should we? Should we be angry at every Iranian, Iraqi, or someone from Afghanistan? Should we still be angry with those from Vietnam, Germany, Japan or any other country?
Let us put the past in the past. As the Jews suffered so horrifically at the hands of an evil ruler and today they have moved forward.
We do not know who the first person was who sold slaves…who cares as long as they are no longer doing it. There is no reason to feel victim to the color of your skin. There are many successful people of every race in this country. We have to stop making excuses for our behavior and holding on to anger toward others. Negativity and anger will not produce positive results in a person’s life and teaching our children and their children to keep that anger and resentment alive is not going to bring about anything good or productive.
If you want better in your life and the lives of your family, teach them not about slavery and to hold onto that anger and resentment, but to look forward toward their personal goals and be all that they can be, because they can be anything they want to be in this day and age. There are no longer any excuses except what they want and how bad they want it. There are too many people in this country who come from poverty in their country competing for college spots and jobs, so teach them to fight for what they want to be by studying hard and being the best person they can be.
- BJA
  
  “The answer to the original question, “Was the first slave owner a Black Man?” was not answered as far as I can tell.”
  
  I guess it was just assumed that the people listed were white, since that was the point, but here is a quick rundown of those mentioned:
  
  Front top to bottom
  
  VA, Pre-law
  Sir George Yeardley (1619) – White
  Abraham Piersey (1619) – White
  
  VA, Post law
  Hugh Gwyn (1640) – White (first documented “legal” slave owner in the colonies)
  
  MA, Pre-law
  Samuel Maverick (1634) – White
  Governor John Winthrop (1641) – White
  
  MA Post Law
  Any slave holder at the time the 1641 law was passed was a “legal” slave owner, and there were no known black slave owners in MA
  
  NY Pre-law
  1626, first 11 Africans, slaves, arrive in NY (obviously not owned by blacks, since they were themselves the first blacks)
  
  NY Post Law
  1652 Slave law passed, all slave owners become the first “legal” slave owners, and there were no known black slave owners in NY
  
  NH Pre-law
  First known African in NH was also the first slave (1645). Obviously the first slave owner wasn’t black.
  
  CT Pre-law
  Gysbert Opdyke (1639) – white
  
  CT Post law
  1650 Slave law passed, all slave owners become the first “legal” slave owners, and there were no known black slave owners in CT
  
  DE Pre-law
  Johan Printz (1639) – White
  
  Then you have, in 1655, Anthony Johnson, who may or may not have even been a “slave owner”, he at the very least was the first black man known to have indentured servants, and it is assumed that one of them became his slave, but there is no hard evidence of thia, since the court case simply says that John Casor was returned to him, nothing about him being returned for life.
  - Cathy
    
    Thank you for this entire rundown, however, I meant who began selling slaves and making large amounts of money doing it. I believe that was a black man who saw an opportunity to make a huge income.
- BJA
  
  As far as the comment about a black man “starting slavery” and getting rich selling slaves to other countries, there is no way of knowing if that is true or not, since slavery is older than written history and no one knows who the first slave owner was.
  - Cathy
    
    This is interesting that it is not documented. However, never does it say anywhere that a “white” man began slavery to earn an income. It does say that “white” people owned slaves, which is clearly just wrong. Especially, after hearing how they were treated as human beings. My interest is why are we still hung up on this subject? Let’s say a “black” man started slavery in the US, would the black community be angry with themselves and not the white man anymore? I don’t think so. So, because they keep remembering these facts, they are bitter and hostile and it just won’t go away. Why is that? There is equal opportunity, if not more, for the black communities then other races. The Asian community is doing very well here in the US (Chinese, Korean, Indian). Do you know why there is a difference? I believe they don’t have any anger or hostility toward white people and if they do, they don’t show it or let it interfere with their goals in succeeding while living here. I really wish that this would not continue to still enslave the black population. It is like they are still bound and defeated because they are still focusing on how they were treated in the past.
    - BJA
      
      It’s prehistoric, that is kind of the definition of “not documented” since there was no written history. And no, there is no way of knowing whether it was a black or white man that started slavery “period”.
      
      As far as Asians go, they didn’t start immigrating here until the mid-1800’s, hundreds of years after blacks were here and generations of them had already been enslaved. The Asians weren’t enslaved like the blacks were, which is probably why they don’t have the anger and hostility.
      - Cathy
        
        Exactly, so why would it be considered a prejudice against the caucasian race other then the slave owners behavior which doesn’t have to do with the entire caucasian population. Not every white person or their ancestors participated in slavery or even agree with it. I’m just asking.
Bobby English

IMPOSITION OF WHITE SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS

In the Midrash Rabbah, a rabbinical commentary, there is a prediction one day all
gentiles will be slaves of Jews. [1]

In the British West Indies much of the early capital to finance White Slavery came from Sephardic Jews from Holland. They provided credit, machinery and shipping facilities. In the 1630s Dutch Jews had been deeply involved in the enslavement of the Irish, financing their transport to slave plantations in the tropics. By the 1660s, this combination of Zionist finance and White Slave labor made the British island colony of Barbados the richest in the empire. The island’s value, in terms of trade and capital exceeded that of all other British colonies combined. [2]

Of the fact that the wealth of Barbados was founded on the backs of White Slave labor there can be no doubt. White Slave laborers from Britain and Ireland
were the mainstay of the sugar colony. Until the mid‑1640s there were almost no
Blacks in Barbados.

George Downing wrote to John Winthrop, the colonial governor of Massachusetts in 1645, that planters who wanted to make a fortune in the British West Indies must procure White Slave labor “out of England” if they wanted to succeed. [3]

From their experience with rebellious Irish slaves, Dutch Jews would eventually be instrumental in the switch from White to Black slavery in the British West Indies.

Blacks were more docile, and more profitable. The English traffic in slaves in the first half of the seventeenth century was solely in White slaves. The English had no slave base in West Africa, as did the Dutch Sephardim who were not only
bankers and shipping magnates but slave masters and plantation owners themselves. Jews were forbidden by English law to own White Protestant slaves although in practice this was not uniformly enforced, Irish slaves were allowed to the Jewish slavers but were regarded by them as intractable. Hence certain Jews
became prime movers behind the African slave trade and the importation of Negro slaves into the New World. [4]

White Slavery was the historic base upon which Negro slavery was constructed.

“…the important structures, labor ideologies and social relations necessary for
slavery already had been established within indentured servitude…White
Servitude…in many ways came remarkably close to the ‘ideal type’ of chattel
slavery which later became associated with the African experience.” [5]

And:

“The practice developed and tolerated in the kidnapping of Whites laid the
foundation for the kidnapping of Negroes.” [6]

The official papers of the White Slave trade refer to adult White Slaves as “freight” and White Child Slaves were termed “half‑ freight.” Like any other
commodity on the shipping inventories, WHITE HUMAN BEINGS WERE SEEN
STRICTLY IN TERMS OF MARKET ECONOMICS BY MERCHANTS.

The American colonies prospered through the use of White Slaves which Virginia
planter John Pory declared in 1619 were “our principal wealth.”

“The White Servant, a semi‑slave, was more important in the 17th century than even the Negro slave, in respect IN BOTH NUMBERS and economic significance.” [7]

Where Establishment history books or films touch on White Slavery it is referred to with the deceptively mild‑sounding title of “indentured servitude,”
The implication being that the Enslavement of Whites was not as terrible or
all- encompassing as Negro “SLAVERY” but constituted instead a more benign bondage, that of “SERVITUDE.”

Yet the terms servant and slave were often used interchangeably to refer to people whose status was clearly that of permanent, lifetime enslavement. “An Account of the English Sugar Plantations” in the British
Museum [8] written circa 1660‑1685 refers to Black and White Slaves as

“servants…the Colonyes were plentifully supplied with Negro and Christian {White} servants which are the nerves and sinews of a plantacon…” (Christian was a euphemism for White)…In the North American colonies in the 17th
and 18th centuries and subsequently in the United States, servant was the
usual designation for a slave.” [9]

The use of the word servant to describe a slave would have been very prevalent among a Bible‑literate people like colonial Americans.

In all English translations of the Bible available at the time, from Wycliffe’s to the 1611 King James version, the word slave as it appeared in the original Biblical languages was translated as servant. For example, the King James Version of Genesis 9:25 is rendered:

“Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be.”

The intended meaning here is clearly that of slave and there is little doubt that in the mind of early Americans the word servant was synonymous with slave. [10]
In original documents of the White merchants who transported negroes from Africa the Blacks were called servants:

“…one notes that the Company of Royal Adventurers referred to their cargo as ‘egers,’ ‘Negro‑Servants,’ ‘Servants…from Africa…” [11]

Oscar Handlin, Professor of History at Harvard University, debunks the propaganda that slavery was strictly a racist operation, part of a conspiracy of White Supremacy. Prof. Handlin points to the facts that:

(1). Whites as well as Blacks were enslaved.

(2). In the 17th century slaves of both races were called servants.

( 3). The colonial merchants of 17th century America had no qualms about enslaving their own White kindred:

“Through the first three‑quarters of the 17th century, the Negroes, even in the South, were not numerous…They came into a society in which a large part of the (White) population was to some degree unfree…The Negroes lack of freedom was not unusual. These (Black) newcomers, like so many others, were accepted, bought and held, as kinds of servants…It was in this sense that Negro servants were sometimes called slaves …For that matter, it also applied to White Englishmen…in New England and New York too there had early been an intense desire for cheap unfree hands, for ‘bond slavery, villeinage of Captivity,’ whether it be White, Negro or Indian…” [12]

A survey of the various ad hoc codes and regulations devised in the 17th century for the governing of those in bondage reveals no special category for Black slaves. [13]

“During Ligon’s time in Barbados (1647‑1650), White indentured female servants worked in the field gangs alongside the small but rapidly growing number of enslaved black women. In this formative stage of the Sugar Revolution, planters did not attempt to formulate a division of labor along racial lines. White indentured
servants…were not perceived by their masters as worthy of special treatment
in the labor regime.” [14]

The contemporary academic consensus on slavery in America represents history by retroactive fiat, decreeing that conclusions about the entire epoch fit the characterizations of its final stage, the 19th century Southern plantation system.

Prof. Handlin informs us that legislators in Virginia sought to cover‑up the record of White bondage and its equivalence to Negro servitude:

“The compiler of the Virginia laws (codifying Black slavery for the first time) then takes the liberty of altering texts to bring earlier legislation into line with his own new notions.” [15]

For Examples of alteratings to insert the word slave as a reference to Blacks in Virginia when it had not been used to describe them that way before, see Hening,
Vol. 2, pp. iii, 170, 283, 490. What was later lawmakers sought to cover‑up?

The fact that the White ruling class of Colonial America had cast their own White
People into the same condition as the Blacks, or even worse. Richard Ligon’s eyewitness report of a White Slave revolt in Barbados in 1649 has been consistently referred down through the years as a rebellion of Negro Slaves by at least a dozen later historians such as Poyer, Oldmixon, Schomburgh et al.

In their cases this does not seem to have been a matter of deliberate falsification, but rather a complete inability to conceive of Whites as Slaves. Ligon had written that the rebels in question had not been able to “endure such slavery” any longer and the later historians automatically assumed that this had to have been a reference to Negroes.

IT IS THIS PERSISTENT COGNITION BY CATEGORICAL PRECONCEPTION THAT RENDERS MUCH OF WHAT PASSES FOR COLONIAL HISTORY IN OUR ERA INACCURATE AND MISLEADING.

17th century colonial slavery and 19th century American slavery are not a seamless garment. Historians who pretend otherwise have to maintain several fallacies, the chief among these being the supposition that when White “servants” constituted the majority of servile laborers in the colonial period, they worked in
privileged or even luxurious conditions which were forbidden to Blacks.

In truth,

WHITE SLAVES WERE OFTEN RESTRICTED TO DOING THE DIRTY, BACKBREAKING FIELD WORK WHILE BLACKS AND EVEN INDIANS WERE TAKEN INTO THE PLANTATION MANSION HOUSES TO WORK AS DOMESTICS:

“Contemporaries were aware that the popular stereotyping of (White) female
indentured servants as whores, sluts and debauched wenches, discouraged their
use in elite planter households. Many pioneer planters preferred to employ
Amerindian women in their households…With the… establishment of an elitist
social culture, there was a tendency to reject (White) indentured servants as domestics…black women…represented a more attractive option and, as a result, were widely employed as domestics in the second half of the 17th century. In 1675 for example John Blake, who had recently arrived on the island (of Barbados), informed his brother in Ireland that his White Indentured Servant was a ‘slut’ and he would like to be rid of her…(in favor of a ‘neger wench’).” [16]

In the 17th century White slaves were cheaper to acquire than Negroes and therefore were often mistreated to a greater extent. Having paid a bigger price for the Negro,

“the planters treated the black better than they did their ‘Christian’ White
Servant. Even the Negroes recognized this and did not hesitate to show their
contempt for those White Men who, they could see, were worse off than
themselves…” [17]

IT WAS WHITE SLAVES WHO BUILT AMERICA FROM ITS VERY BEGINNINGS AND MADE UP THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF SLAVE‑ ABORERS IN THE COLONIES NOT BLACKS in the 17th century. Negro slaves seldom had to do the kind of virtually lethal work the White Slaves of America did in the formative years of settlement.

“The frontier demands for heavy manual labor, such as felling trees, soil clearance, and general infrastructural development, had been satisfied primarily
BY WHITE INDENTURED SERVANTS (Slaves) BETWEEN 1627 AND 1643.” [18]

The merchant class of early America was an equal opportunity enslaver and viewed with enthusiasm the bondage of all poor people within their grasp, including their own White kinsmen. There was a precedent for this in the English legal concept of villeinage, a form of medieval White Slavery in England.

“…as late as 1669 those who thought of large‑scale agriculture assumed it would be manned not by Negroes but by servile Whites under a condition of villeinage. John Locke’s constitutions for South Carolina envisaged an hereditary group of servile ‘leet men’; and Lord Shaftsbury’s signory on Locke Island in 1674 actually attempted to put the scheme into practice.” [19]

The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines servitude as

“slavery or bondage of any kind.” The dictionary defines “bondage” as “being
bound by or subjected to external control.” It defines “slavery” as “ownership of a person or persons by another or others.”

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WHITES IN COLONIAL AMERICA WERE OWNED OUTRIGHT BY THEIR MASTERS AND DIED IN SLAVERY. THEY HAD NO CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN LIVES AND WERE AUCTIONED ON THE BLOCK AND EXAMINED LIKE LIVESTOCK exactly like Black slaves, with the exception that these Whites were enslaved by their own race. White Slaves, “found
themselves powerless as individuals, without honor or respect and driven into
commodity production not by any inner sense of moral duty but by the outer
stimulus of the whip.” [20]

[1] Soncino edition, section Ecclesiastes, p. 58.

[2] The British Empire in America, John Oldmixon, Vol. 2, p. 186.

[3] Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America,
Elizabeth Donnan, pp. 125‑126.

[4] An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the British West Indies, Dalby Thomas, pp. 36‑37; The Role of the Sephardic Jews in the British Caribbean Area in the Seventeenth Century, G. Merrill; Caribbean Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 [1964‑65]; 32‑49.

[5] White Servitude, Hilary McD. Beckles, pp. 6‑7, 71.

[6] From Columbus to Castro, Eric Williams, p. 103.

[7] Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America, Marcus W. Jernegan, p. 45.

[8] Stowe Manuscripte 324, f. 6.

[9] Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, p. 2,739.

[10] cf. Genesis 9:25 in the New International Version Bible.

[11] Handlin, p. 205.

[12] Handlin, pp. 202‑204, 218.

[13] Hening, Vol. 1, pp. 226, 258, 540.

[14] Natural Rebels, Beckles, p. 29.

[15] Handlin, p. 216.

[16] Natural Rebels, Beckles, pp. 56‑57.

[17] Bridenbaugh, p. 118.

[18] Natural Rebels, Beckles, p. 8.

[19] Handlin, p. 207.

[20] White Servitude, Beckles, p. 5.
Bobby English

BARACK HUSSAIN OBAMA : SON OF BLACK SLAVERS

Slavery still stalks the American consciousness, its wounds yet festering in many hearts. If Barack Obama were to set his mind to it, he could heal much of the damage this peculiar institution wrought on our national soul. This great and tragic error that must be given justice. Obama is the best person in the world who can recognize, remember and honor the deaths of 125 million and the enslavement of tens of millions of people.

His unique qualifications can be found in his names. Until he was 20 years old, he went by the first name Barry. Then he decided to be called Barack Hussein Obama, his original birth name.

Many people seem to think the names “Barack” and “Obama” are African names. They are not.

Baraq [Barack] was the name of the winged horse-like creature that took Mohammed to Paradise in the Night Journey. Baraq can also mean God’s blessing. Obama is Swahili for Osama, who was one of Mohammed’s chief warriors. Osama also means lion. Hussein reminds some Americans of Saddam Hussein, and Obama’s supporters get upset if it is used. Hussein was the name of Mohammed’s grandson. So Obama’s entire name is based upon Islamic mythology and African conquest. Barack Hussein Obama means [Allah’s blessing] [Mohammed’s grandson] [One of Mohammed’s finest warriors].

Obama’s name reveals a part of history that is unknown or hidden about America, Africa and slavery. It also reveals a history of the destruction of native African civilization. His name came from his father, a so-called Arab African. The word Arab is the clue to the hidden history.

Kafirs (non-Muslims) rarely refer to Islam, but call it by an ethnic name whenever they can. When Islam conquered the Middle East, the conquerors were not called Muslims, but Arabs. In Eastern Europe the Muslim invaders were called Turks. In Spain conquering Muslims were referred to as Moors. Thus it is that the Islamic culture in Africa, Arab African, is referred to with an ethnic name, Arab Africans, like Obama’s father, are Muslims who leave behind their African culture and adopt
the Arab culture.

The Arab African Muslim has always been associated with slavery because Islam is the driving force in the history of world slavery.

Islam’s connection with slavery starts with Mohammed. The exact details of how slaves are taken are described in detail in the Sira, Mohammed’s biography. The Sira is a sacred text since it relates Mohammed’s words and deeds, called the Sunna. Everything he did is the perfect pattern of behavior for all Muslims.

Mohammed was involved in every single aspect and detail of slavery. He bought and sold slaves both retail and wholesale. He gave them as gifts, used them for sex, received them as gifts, stood by as slaves were beaten, attacked. He enslaved tribes, and owned black slaves. Indeed, his rise to political success was financed, in part, by the profit of his slave trade.

So the sacred pattern of Mohammed and Islam is the enslavement of non-Muslims, kafirs. For 1400 years Islam has enslaved all races and cultures including Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Zoroastrians, animists, and atheists. Only Muslims are free of being enslaved.

WHAT OBAMA SHOULD DO

Obama should tell us that there is only one way to understand Africa and slavery and that is to understand political Islam. For 1400 years Islam has steadily been at work in Africa. The easiest place for Americans to see Islam’s annihilation of kafir civilization is in North Africa and Egypt. Egypt used to be a Christian and Coptic (the descendants of the Pharaohs) country. North Africa was a Greek and Christian culture, and at one time a part of the Roman Empire.

The first Islamic assault on African culture was the jihad that annihilated Coptic Egyptian culture and Greek culture in Northern Africa. Today these areas are Arabic and Islamic.

That was just the thin end of the jihad wedge. Over the next 1400 years, Islam took approximately 25 million slaves out of Africa. An Arabic word for African is abd, the same word that is used for black slave. Arabic has about 40 words for slaves. White slaves are mamluk. Islam took more than a million European
slaves into slavery.

The highest priced slave in the Meccan slave market was a white woman.

There is great deal of collateral damage when a slave is taken. A warring party attacks a tribe and when enough of the protectors are killed, the rest will surrender and become slaves. All of those who were strong enough to work were taken away in a forced march for days. But there are many who are left behind — the young, the old, and the sick and injured.

Estimates vary, but from 5 to 10 people left behind died as the result of taking one slave. So for 25 million slaves, we have the deaths of 125 million Africans over a 1400-year period.

When the story of slavery is told in America, as in the movie Roots, the sailors get off the boats and capture the Africans and make them slaves.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

When the white JEW slaver showed up in his wooden ship, he made a business deal with a Muslim wholesaler. Jihad was the machinery that Mohammed used, and his model worked well in Africa as slavers filled the slave pens for the same reason that Mohammed did it: profit. White JEWS only traded slaves with Islam for about 200 years. Islam was in the slave trade before and after selling to the West.

If you would like to learn about the Arab African slave traders that came from the same area of Africa that Obama’s father came from, read Tippu Tip and the East African Slave Trade (Leda Farrant, Northumberland Press, 1975). Tippu Tip looked African, but he was 100% Arab and Muslim. By the way, Arab is not a racial term, but a cultural/language term.

But the slave trade had another effect. Africa slowly became Islamic. Jihad worked in many ways to bring about conversion. Sometimes trade introduced Islam and a hybrid Islam/native African religion evolved. Then jihad was used to purify and remove the African culture to result in a purer Islam. But in the end, half of Africa
fell to Islam.

The oddest thing is that many people have the idea that an Arab African is the same as African. When the Arab culture replaces the native African culture the culture is not African. African culture is no more Arab than Hindu culture is Arab. Sharia law is just as foreign to native African culture as it is to ours.

The magnitude of this problem is seen in Darfur, where Arab Africans are destroying Africans who are not yet Arab enough. This is a centuries-long jihad to annihilate the native African culture. This process is no different than the process by which Coptic Egypt became Arab Egypt. Islam is not a religion but a complete civilization whose stated goal is to replace all other civilizations. There has never been a historical example of a country that kept its native culture after Islam entered. So Africa is an ordinary historical example.

The ignorance about the history behind Obama’s names is the root of why he can achieve such an impact. Obama represents the chance to help heal the curse of slavery in America by revealing its complete history. He is a descendant of a white woman who had slave owners in her ancestry. His African father descended from those who enslaved the Africans. Obama is descended from slave owners and slave traders, but he does not have a single drop of slave blood in him.

Since race trumps all, everyone sees him as being representative of America’s
slave descendants. It becomes true simply because in a race/culture-obsessed
society, some want it to be true. Obama’s slave ancestry is a fiction and
not reality.

Now here is the last little twist to Obama’s name. He called himself Barry, an Irish name, for many years in America. He changed what he wanted to be called after he went to Pakistan for a three-week stay. He left America as Barry and returned as Barack.

It was JEWS who bought and shipped slaves from Islam for 200 years, but after that, the CHRISTIAN culture was first to outlaw slavery. So Obama changed his name from a culture that abolished slavery to a name from a culture that has enslaved others for 1400 years and has a highly detaileddoctrine of slavery.
Richard Hidalgo

In 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced one of the first black indentured servants to slavery as punishment. In 1654, John Casor became the first Black legal slave to be owned by another person in America. Anthony Johnson, previously Black indentured slave, claimed John Casor as his slave. The Northampton County rule against Casor, and declared him propter for life by Anthony Johnson. Since
Africans were not English, they were not covered by the English Common Law.

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~arihuang/academic/abg/slavery/history.html
- Dexter Brown
  
  Your own comment contradicts itself, it mentions the 1640 case (involving John Punch and Hugh Gwyn, the first legal slave and slave owner) then tries to say John Casor and Anthony Johnson in 1654 were first.
  - Richard Hidalgo
    
    Thanks for noticing, I have corrected that error (see above)
Chase Miller

Why is this even an article though, if your going to talk about slavery not in America, why does it matter if you’re talking about Europeans? Africans definitely had the first slaves merely by the fact that they were the first people
MegMarkR1

Not all slaves came from Africa, which is ironic since most blacks today in America claim to be African-American (instead of just American since they were born here). Madagascar sold slaves to America and Madagascar is Asia, not Africa. DNA has come a long way. Surprisingly, when I had mine done I came back as mostly Irish, Great Britain and Scandinavian, but I had traces of North African and Middle Eastern as well, but I bleed AMERICAN since I was born here. I was watching Finding Your Roots last night, which had three blacks on and two of them came back with no African blood in them at all. Their DNA ethnicity originated in Asia.
- BJA
  
  Just for Clarity, Madagascar is in fact part of Africa.
  
  https://www.google.com/maps/place/Madagascar/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x21d1a4e3ea238545:0x5244e3c1977b1388?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjrovOLnrzKAhULCBoKHWNeBLkQ8gEIHzAA
  - MegMarkR1
    
    “Although located some 250 miles (400 km) from the African continent, Madagascar’s population is primarily related not to African peoples but rather to those of Indonesia, more than 3,000 miles (4,800 km) to the east. The Malagasy peoples, moreover, do not consider themselves to be Africans, but, because of the continuing bond with France that resulted from former colonial rule, the island developed political, economic, and cultural links with the French-speaking countries of western Africa.”
    
    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/355562/Madagascar
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The author conflates slaves, indentured servants. Johnson began in indentured servitude and won the court case to change another person status to indentured servitude for life. Semantics.
- BJA
  
  There is nothing conflated about the two in this article. Not one slave mentioned in this article was an indentured servant other than the two made slaves for life by a court of law. None of which makes Anthony Johnson the first slave owner.
Pax Humana

This website is nothing but racism and historical revisionism. You all act like people of other backgrounds never enslaved one another when, in fact, they did so all the time and also LONG before the so-called “white” or “Hispanic” people did the deed.
- BJA
  
  That’s cute, what’s racist about it exactly? sorry you are offended by facts. Also this article isn’t about other times and other peoples, it’s about America.
  - Pax Humana
    
    How about everything that it says and the general SJW attitude that the website exudes? Furthermore, I am not the one that is offended by facts, but you and the rest of the people that are on Disqus, as well as this website, are a bunch of butt hurt trolls that can not handle the truth, the REAL and INDISPUTABLE truth. Furthermore, in comparison to so-called “Black” people, the so-called “white” people, particularly the ones that came from the country of Ireland, and the so-called “Asian” and “Native American” people were often treated just as badly, if not even WORSE, than the so-called “black” people. However, thankfully, I am glad that I oppose slavery and that I am smart enough to see all of the different kinds of slavery that still exist to this day. You thought that it was gone, but in reality, it just changed the way that it did business. No, it could not be all of THAT now, could it not, troll?
    - BJA
      
      I can’t handle the truth, so i’m crying like a bitch on some website. oh wait, that’s you! I like how you call me the troll, like it will deflect the fact that you are actually the troll.
Crysostomos

Slave or no slave doesn’t make a difference today. People hate people no matter how you slice it. No one understands that no one had a choice of race before they were even born, and they want to complain……go figure. Accept who and what you are and move on.
Crysostomos

They were already slaves before they came to America. A white man freed them too. His name I think is Abraham Lincoln.
- Dexter Brown
  
  That makes slavery ok, right? *highfive*
Shannon Crawford Tuten

what you fail to mention about Anthony Johnson and lost in your trying to “debunk” an imporant part of the history of slavery in the US is his case set a precedent, it set the time for being a slave “for life” no longer indentured servants, the only way to be freed was for someone to purchase you and free you, many blacks owned their relatives as a way to free them.
- Dexter Brown
  
  His case didn’t set any precedent, chattel slavery had been around for centuries, and in England since the 1400’s (don’t forget we were British Colonies) and the legal precedent for owning slaves for like was already set in MA under it’s 1641 law, and even then the precedent for owning someone for life based on a court ruling was already set 15 years prior in the John Punch case.
  
  The only people who think this was a precedent are the ones who really really want a black man to have been the first slave owner, and the same people who say “but who SOLD us the blacks?!” like it somehow makes slavery OK.
theORIGINALbelle

It’s important to share facts and truth. This meme is a lie –

1- the man in the portrait is a former slave, an abolitionist born in Kentucky who escaped with his family to Boston. His name is Lewis Hayden. He was a political, lecturer, and businessman. He and his wife helped a vast amount of slaves gain their freedom in the underground Railroad. He was born 1811 died 1889.

2- Anthony Johnson formerly known as Antonio, was originally from Angola. He was sold into slavery by Arabs. Antonio was brought to the colonies (early settlers) in 1621 aboard the James. He was sold to a white planter as a indentured servant. He worked on a tobacco farm in VA. Sometime after 1635 he worked off his debt and gained his freedom. Changed his name to Anthony Johnson. Married, had family and became successful. He owned land and indentured servants 4 white 1 black.

3. If slavery began in 1619, and Anthony came over as an indentured servant….he is NOT the first person to own slaves in this country. Did he have indentured servants? Yes! But this meme is based on lies nd half truths

Whoever created this meme really lost all credibility when using a portrait of a man born 200 years after the first slaves arrived in the states (then colonies)
JohnSebastian1

Somebody needs to tell the University of Berkeley. They say differently:

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~arihuang/academic/abg/slavery/history.html
- Dexter Brown
  
  You do realize that ISN’T an official Berkeley page, but a student page right? imagine a student being wrong? oh my
Kross Theriot

regardless who owned slaves first or what not the FACT is that Africa sold their own peoples out for a quick buck, and African immigrants in North America were slave owners too (many of them former slaves themselves).

slavery ended a long time ago. you dont know anyone that was a slave or knew anyone that knew anyone that was a slave. If your life is shitty now, you might want to reevaluate it, because slavery isnt the reason you are where you are ( rich or poor).
Wade

Bulls**t. Anthony Johnson WAS the first slave owner. The others were indentured servants, as Johnson had been. Nothing like Liberal PC trying to cloud the historical truth!
- Dexter Brown
  
  You are right, as long as you ignore the mountain of evidence that proves otherwise. I find there is nothing more “liberal PC” than trying to pass the blame to someone else because you feel it somehow absolves you from any wrong doing. If it somehow makes you feel better believing the first slave owner was black, regardless of ALL evidence proving otherwise, then feel free to keep thinking it.
Tamara-rxc Downey

Why the need for all the filler? Why not just answer the question?

Anthony Johnson was indeed the FIRST (not only) BLACK MAN to own BLACK SLAVES in what is known as the USA today.

Anthony Johnson first agreed to terms of being an indentured servant, as were literally hundreds of thousands of whites at the time, in the Colony of Virginia. He later earned his freedom and his got his land as contracted by the terms of the indentured servitude. He became a tobacco farmer, gained great wealth. Not only was he one of the first black property owners, but also a black slaveholder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_%28colonist%29
- BJA
  
  The question wasn’t whether he was the first black slave owner, it was whether he was the first slave owner period. He wasn’t, and there is no such thing as too much proof.
  - Tamara-rxc Downey
    
    He was the first black slave owner though, and that gets forgotten in all the books on slavery in the US, as do other points like blacks in Africa stole blacks from other tribes to sell them to the Spanish, Arabs, other black Africans, and the British. Just saying that history really gets distorted in North America when it comes to telling the truth about black slavery. Kind hard to blame everything on whites when you find out that blacks made money off of selling slaves, it wasn’t just whites buying them, and blacks in the US colonies owned plantations and slaves too.
DavieGrohlton

Now we are all slaves to the top 20 corporations around the world. They do not pay taxes or very little in taxes, they refuse to pay fair wages, they bribe the keepers of law to alter laws to their benefit, and manipulate economic factors, to say the least. Yet, people want to still bytch and whine about who the fyck was a slave over 300 GD years ago…….Your freedom is an illusion…. just wait until the next “big” war breaks out… Rothschild greed > any Government
Randall B/1/6

Mythdebunker adds some myths of his own.

How can there have been slaves in Boston in 1624 when Boston was not settled until 1630?

Very tendentious–one might almost say dishonest–interpretations of his sources.

And nice touch in describing slavery in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam as “slavery in New York.”
- BJA
  
  Would it make you happier if it said Massachusetts instead, since it was the area NOW known as Boston, even though it wasn’t named that yet?
  
  Samuel Maverick was in North America in 1622, where he may have accompanied English explorer Capt. Christopher Levett, before his father’s arrival in Dorchester some years later. Samuel Maverick first settled at Winnissimet, the area of previously failed colony of Wessagussut.
  
  Maverick settled in the area of modern-day Boston, after his arrival in Massachusetts, which he later claimed was in 1624. Some historians have suggested that Maverick arrived in the area with English explorer Capt. Christopher Levett, who made an exploration of the New England coast about that time.) Maverick built a fortified house to ward against Indian attacks and armed it with four guns. It is said to be the first permanent house in Massachusetts.
  
  Massachusetts was the first slave-holding colony in New England, though the exact beginning of black slavery in what became Massachusetts cannot be dated exactly. Slavery there is said to have predated the settlement of Massachusetts Bay colony in 1629, and circumstantial evidence gives a date of 1624-1629 for the first slaves. “Samuel Maverick, apparently New England’s first slaveholder, arrived in Massachusetts in 1624
  
  https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/stowedocuments/Slavery_in_New_England.pdf
  
  When John Winthrop came to Boston in 1630, the land was occupied by Samuel Maverick, who lived here for 25 years, and who became the first slaveholder in the colony.
  
  -Rand McNally & Cos’ handy guide to Boston
  
  https://books.google.com/books?id=0AIZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=Samuel+Maverick+was+the+first+slaveholder+in+the+colony&source=bl&ots=8RFtC6Hf5s&sig=vBW_rW94409EoSSQqD6C6ilX_lM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjszOX-u9zMAhXPZj4KHQQtD60Q6AEIZzAO#v=onepage&q=Samuel%20Maverick%20was%20the%20first%20slaveholder%20in%20the%20colony&f=false
  
  The First Slaveholder was probably Samuel Maverick, who arrived in Massachusetts with his two blacks.
  
  – Slavery: A World History, Milton Meltzer
  
  https://books.google.com/books?id=8qMc-y3ya9UC&pg=RA1-PA139&lpg=RA1-PA139&dq=Samuel+Maverick+was+the+first+slaveholder+in+the+colony&source=bl&ots=tWAnQ95kwa&sig=cmQ-855XVVx2b2LfNv966hLr4t0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjszOX-u9zMAhXPZj4KHQQtD60Q6AEIUTAI#v=onepage&q=Samuel%20Maverick%20was%20the%20first%20slaveholder%20in%20the%20colony&f=false
  
  In 1614, explorer Captain John Smith sailed to the Massachusetts Bay and befriended the tribe living in the area. Two years later he published a map of the area and labeled it “New England” to make it more appealing to English colonists.
  
  By 1618, more than two thirds of the Massachusetts Indians living in the area were wiped out by yellow fever and small pox brought by European traders. Only 25,000 Indians survived.
  
  After a settlement known as the Gorges colony failed in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1623, almost all of the colonists returned to England, except for one, Reverend William Blackstone.
  
  Blackstone, an Anglican clergymen, moved from Weymouth to Shawmut in the area that is now Beacon Hill. This made him the first settler to live in Boston.
  
  Blackstone (also spelled Blaxton) built a cabin near a fresh water spring, at what is now the intersection of Charles street and Beacon street, and lived isolated and alone. He sustained himself by hunting animals and planting the first ever apple orchard in New England from seeds he collected.
  
  http://historyofmassachusetts.org/a-brief-history-of-early-boston/
blue

Oh brother…..you need better sources of reference than the race hustlers you have opted for. Anthony Johnson was a non volunteered indentured servant who was set free along with his also indentured servant African wife Mary who came from England and given some land and supplies upon his fulfillment of his indentured servitude which was typical of what became of indentured servants of that time who btw were most often scots, germans, irish. He and the other 19 or so Africans traded for supplies were not considered slaves but considered indentured here atleast. AFRICAN Anthony went on to get 5 indentured servants of his own 4 whites and one black man John Caser, whose name is spelled several different ways historically speaking. Don’t know about the 4 white men but I assume that they were freed after their contracts were fulfilled——-but Anthony refused to give Casor his freedom for whatever reason making him a slave for life–he was the first slave in America who had not done something criminal to become a permanent indentured servant aka slave. Secondly, you don’t seem to realize that slavery as it came started off about RELIGION not color—-although it did not start off as so, slowly over the years enslaving someone was accepted based on upon whether they were considered heathens or not (non Christians in their homelands)…Indians were enslaved, except they often died of diseases or ran away so they weren’t very good slaves. As far as the rest of your articles…they are just so wrong on so many items that it is hard to keep up. Santo Domingo of AFRICAN decent was the first black in the New York/New asterdam area I 1613/1614 A free black btw. You assume to much that is wrong when you wrote your article. You assume blacks weren’t free men then, you assume slavery always was when in fact it slowly came about in the 1600’s for blacks here in a SERIES of events , you assume blacks were the only slaves, you assume it was based on color but it was actually Christians discriminating against non Christians when slavery here first started, and you absolutely have trouble telling the different between being a slave for life and temporary indentured servitude.
guruurug

myth not debunked
Stan King

The fact that the author showed no mention of the white Irish slaves ( SLAVES ) shows me how little he actually knows about the true history of slavery in America.
- BJA
  
  If you can find any actual historians, American or Irish, that agree that the Irish were chattel slaves in the US or American colonies, let me know.
triangle whip

The 1st Africans here were indentured servants.
Skylar Thomas

Doesn’t change the fact that 40% of the slave owners at the time of the Civil War were black or that my Italian ancestors were picking cotton besides black slaves as indentured servants.
- BJA
  
  0.01% of free people in the country were black slave owners.
JoeBagodonuts3

Slavery in the USA didn’t start till 4th July 1776. Prior to that it was under rule of the Brits, technically.
So,,,
Lord Wrayth Gerik

How could Johnson be the first slave owner when slavery was already legal? Slavery was legalized in 1641 by Gov John Winthrop of Massachusetts?

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Winthrop-American-colonial-governor
Lord Wrayth Gerik

How was Anthony Johnson able to pose for a photograph 2 centuries before the camera was invented?
Lord Wrayth Gerik

Keep in mind, Europe send all their crazy white here. After seeing the responses, I know why.

Have you noticed every country Europeans occupy starts developing racial problems?

Everywhere Europeans go , they spread hate, apartheid, segregation and racism? White Europeans are the know race who gone to war with every race, ethnicity, and religion. It’s the same paradigm, Europeans account for only 10% of the global population and started over 90% of the world wars. They’re a magnet for racism. Do you know Scotland is labeled as the most violate developed country in world?

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Was the First Slave Owner in America a Black Man?