The Benevolent, Freemen Slave Owners of Virginia
When you think of Black Americans who were slave owners…wait, have you ever thought about Black Americans as slave owners?
The most famous example of a Black slave owner is Anthony Johnson and his slave John Casor. Anthony Johnson was brought to the United States (US) in 1619 with 19 other Africans who were sold into slavery by the Dutch. Johnson worked as a slave for 30 years when he was “honorable discharged”, freed, and given land. Johnson was viewed as a respected citizen who was able to amass wealth for he and his family. Johnson acquired a slave, a Black man named John Casor who sued Johnson for his freedom. The courts of 1654 determined that Casor was indebted to Johnson as his slave for life, marking the first recorded judicial support of slavery outside of a form of punishment for crimes. This ruling also gave free Black people the right to own slaves.
The law for owning slaves in Virginia was as follows:
Noe Negroes nor Indians to by Christian servants. Whereas it hath beene questioned whither Indians or negroes manumited, or otherwise free, could be capable of perchansing christian servants, it is enacted that noe negroe or Indian though baptised and enjoyned their owne ffreedome shall be capable of any such purchase of christians, but yet not debarred from buying any of their owne nation.
If you haven’t put 2+2 together already, “Christian” is code for “White”. In fact, the law made it that any “christian” purchased by a free Black person was to be considered free.
Virginia was home to over 300,000 Black people in the early 1800s. Only 20,124 were free. By 1860 the number of Black people in Virginia was 490,865, with 58,042 counted as free.
During this time, it was common for freemen to own slaves. Virginia gave freemen unrestricted powers to bestow freedom upon their slaves as the freeman slave owner saw fit. This resulted in freemen using slavery as an act of benevolence. Free Black people would pay to “own” family and friends and then free them. The expectation was that they would be repaid at some point. This was as successful method used to free family, friends, and the unfortunate souls trapped in chattel slavery.
deWhites did not like this at all. Virginia lawmakers instituted new laws stating that any slave freed after 1806 must leave Virginia within 12 months of being freed or else their freedom would be revoked. So freemen continued to buy their family and friends so that they could live “normal” lives, still considered a slave but not treated as property. Freedom could be granted in a will or deed. Unfortunately, due to lack of estate planning, if a Black “master” of a slave dies and has not granted freedom to their “slaves”, those “slaves” could be sold to less benevolent “masters”.
By 1832 deWhites decided that freemen could NOT acquire or purchase any slaves and all contracts of free Black people who “owned” slaves were voided. This law stayed into effect until the end of the Civil War.
Now free(ish), thanks to emancipation, Virginia was left with its own “Negro problem”. Virginia slaveowners (white) sold their crops and their land in order to not have to pay Black people for work. They also made it illegal for Black people to be unemployed, meaning that Black people were still forced to work even though there was no pay. Slavery by another name.
By 1867, an explosion of opportunities presented itself to the newly freed Black person, in the form of newly opened colleges and universities for Black students. Black people began to migrate from the South. The Black Reconstruction period was in full swing, lasting longer than the Confederacy until Black codes and Jim Crow were implemented.
It must be clear. Historically, White Americans do not fuck with Black Americans. This is not up for debate. This is a fact. Something our brothers and sisters in the diaspora need to understand. It is not just about skin color. It is a long-standing, engrained mentality of dehumanizing Black American bodies.
In the 1860s, a German educator by the name of Carl Schurz turned the post-Civil War South, to get a read on White southern sentiments regarding the newly freed Negro. He sent a report to President Andrew Jackson, giving his honest, objective findings of Southern sentiments. They are as followed:
“I made it a special point in most of the conversations I had with Southern men to inquire into their views with regard to this subject…
“Wherever I go-the street, the shop, the house, the hotel, or the steamboat—I hear the people talk in such a way as to indicate that they are yet unable to conceive of the Negro as possessing any rights at all. Men who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors, will cheat a Negro without feeling a single twinge of their honor. To kill a Negro, they do not deem murder; to debauch a Negro woman, they do not think fornication; to take the property away from a Negro, they do not consider robbery. The people boast that when they get freedmen’s affairs in their own hands, to use their own expression, ‘the niggers will catch hell’.
In 2025 we are still “catching hell”. President Pumpkin Spice has openly attacked the accurate retelling of Black American history because it requires the retelling of White America’s role in Black American history.
I tell the story of Black slave owners, not as a gotcha but as an example of how we are not like them and they are not like us. There is an “Us vs. Them” because even when Black Americans got an opportunity to own slaves, that opportunity was used to do right by our people. Yes, there is always an Anthony Johnson, but he is the exception, not the rule. Free Black Americans made an active choice to not be crabs-in-the-barrel and that is a part of our history and legacy that should be applauded.
I take pride in being a Black American. I take pride in knowing I’m the descendent of enslaved Black Americans of Virginia. My grandmother grew up in Halifax, VA. She was a farm girl. I never asked her how they got the farm. But I am. She’s 98 years young. TBD.