How Slavery Started in America

 

SLAVERY IN NORTH AMERICA 1654-JUNE 19, 1865?

https://www.wesleyan.edu/mlk/posters/slavery_northamaerica.html

Four hundred years ago, in 1607, Jamestown, VA, the first permanent settlement by Europeans in North America was founded. In 1610, John Rolfe introduced a strain of tobacco which quickly became the colony’s economic foundation. By 1619, more labor was needed to support the tobacco trade and “indentured servants” were brought to the colony including about 20 Africans. As of 1650, there were about 300 "Africans" living in Virginia, about 1% of an estimated 30,000 population. They were still not slaves, and they joined approximately 4000 white indentured "servants" working out their loans for passage money to Virginia. They were granted 50 acres each when freed from their indentures, so they could raise their own tobacco.

Slavery was brought to North America in 1654, when Anthony Johnson, in Northampton County, convinced the court that he was entitled to the lifetime services of John Casor, a Black man. This was the first judicial approval of life servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Anthony Johnson was a Black man, one of the original 20 brought to Jamestown in 1619. By 1623, he had achieved his freedom and by 1651 was prosperous enough to import five "servants" of his own, for which he was granted 250 acres as "headrights".

Slave sale in Maryland.

However, the Transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas had been around for over a century already, originating around 1500, during the early period of European discovery of West Africa and the establishment of Atlantic colonies in the Caribbean and South and North America when growing sugar cane (and a few other crops) was found to be a lucrative enterprise. Slaves were usually captured by African tribes in raids or open warfare or purchased from other African tribes. Many tribes were happy to get rid of their enemies by capturing and selling them for trade goods--usually whiskey, swords, guns and gold. It is believed that about 11 million men, women and children were transported in ships across the Atlantic to various ports in the Americas, mostly to Brazil and the islands in the Caribbean from 1500 to 1850.