Was The First Slaveowner A Black Man?

The assault on the historical experiences and collective memory of African-descended peoples persists unabated, contributing to ongoing confusion regarding our place within the American empire. As Dr. Amos Wilson asserts in The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness, “people who are ahistorical, who have little knowledge of history, are people who are more gullible, more easily manipulated, and people who can be more easily adapted to the capitalist machine than people who are historically knowledgeable.” The colonial education system has systematically undereducated and miseducated African Americans, severing generations from a critical understanding of their own history. This has culminated in the continuing oppression, exploitation, and degradation of the Black community.

In the contemporary era, the proliferation of digital media, particularly YouTube, has become the primary source of information for many, often compounding historical misrepresentations and contributing to the intellectual impoverishment of society. Many Black people have become victims of deliberate distortion of the Black historical experience. The very subject of this essay exemplifies the dangers of such misinformation.

European Americans have consistently sought to dismiss, discredit, distort, and diminish Black history, acting in the service of interests that preserve white supremacy and maintain control over Black populations. Recently, a troubling revisionist narrative has emerged, attempting to place a Black man at the center of the development of slavery in America. This essay engages critically with this claim by examining the broader context of slavery’s evolution in the English colonies.

A chronological review of English colonization in the Americas is instructive: Jamestown, Virginia (1607); Bermuda (1612); Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620); New Hampshire (1623); Barbados (1625); Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630); Maryland (1634); and Connecticut (1635). These early settlements are crucial to understanding the origins and expansion of racialized slavery that this essay will analyze.

The Spanish set the precedent for enslaving Africans in the Americas, initiating the transatlantic slave trade as early as 1501. It was, therefore, European powers, long before the establishment of the first English colony, who pioneered and institutionalized chattel slavery in the New World. Contrary to revisionist arguments, Europeans were engaged in the enslavement and trafficking of Africans for over two centuries prior to the English colonial presence. Yet, some contemporary commentators, such as Colin Heaton, whose YouTube video inspired this essay, argue that Anthony Johnson, a former Black indentured servant, was the first legal slave owner in the English colonies.

Heaton, holding advanced degrees in history and European Studies, is also the author of The Four War Boer: The Century and Life of Pieter Arnoldus Krueler, a biography chronicling the military exploits of a South African soldier. A Boer in occupied Azania (South Africa) is an interesting figure to research and write a book about. Notably, the book offers little in the way of critical engagement with the pervasive racism and violence of colonial society, focusing instead on military history and thus leaving crucial questions of racial ideology and its consequences largely unexamined. This individual is the person propagating the narrative concerning the identity of the first slaveowner in America, a narrative that many accept uncritically and without rigorous examination.

Anthony Johnson, an Angolan who arrived in Virginia in 1621, eventually gained his freedom, acquired property, and became a tobacco farmer. By 1651, Johnson had established a small estate and, notably, owned enslaved laborers. The case of John Casor, a Black indentured servant with contested legal status, culminated in a 1655 court decision ordering Casor to serve Johnson for life, a ruling that some historians, including Colin Heaton, identify as the first judicial determination of lifetime servitude in the English colonies. However, this narrative requires deeper scrutiny.

This discussion is not a matter of trivial critique; rather, it is an effort to correct the historical record and ensure accuracy in our understanding of the past. In his video, Heaton commits several substantial errors. Notably, he titles his video “First Slave Owner in the Colonies,” and asserts that Anthony Johnson, a Black man, was not only the first legal slaveowner, but also the first slaveowner in the English colonies overall, and I quote: “In effect because hereditary slavery was not in effect during his period of ownership of Casor, the slave for life, and others he purchased, it is arguable that Anthony Johnson was in fact the first actual slave owner in the American colonies and he was a Black man.” Furthermore, Heaton suggests that the Johnson-Casor case served as the primary catalyst for the legalization of slavery in the colonies. He implies it in this question: “What changed in colonial society, altering the status of indentured servants to lifetime slaves, and why?”

The entry of enslaved Africans into Virginia occurred as early as 1619. While there is ongoing debate regarding the precise status of these individuals, whether indentured or enslaved, the institution of lifelong bondage for Africans was already developing in parallel elsewhere. Barbados, established as an English colony in 1625, is particularly significant. In 1636, a political directive decreed that all Africans brought to Barbados were to be treated as lifelong chattel, unequivocally establishing perpetual slavery for Africans under English colonial rule. This predates Johnson’s legal case and demonstrates that English colonists were not only active participants in the slave trade but also early architects of race-based, hereditary slavery.

New England, too, saw the rapid institutionalization of slavery. During the Pequot War of the late 1630s, Native Americans were enslaved, and by 1638, the first documented case of Africans arriving as slaves in Massachusetts occurred with the ship Desire. Connecticut's 1638 records also document the enslavement of Africans, while Massachusetts General Court records from 1636 reveal the legal sanctioning of slavery for captives. Harvard University itself, from its founding in 1636 through the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1783, was built and sustained in part by enslaved labor. In 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties became the first legal code in British North America to explicitly legalize slavery, fifteen years before Johnson’s case. This code sanctioned enslavement for “lawful captives taken in just wars” and for foreigners sold into bondage, influencing legal developments in other colonies.

By 1646, the New England Confederation had codified the practice of exchanging Native captives for African slaves, further entrenching chattel slavery across the region. The evidence is unequivocal: the legal and social foundations of slavery in the English colonies were established by white colonists, well before the Johnson-Casor case.

The narrative now shifts to Virginia, the focal point of the current historical debate. It is important to clarify that this essay does not dispute Anthony Johnson’s status as a slaveholder; rather, it challenges the assertion that Johnson was the first slaveowner in the English colonies, a claim that is both misleading and a fundamental distortion of the historical record.

A closer examination of early Virginia reveals a much more complex and troubling reality. As Robert McColley outlines in his seminal article, “Slavery in Virginia, 1619-1660: A Reexamination,” the extant records of early Virginia, particularly county and court documents dating back to the 1630s, offer clear evidence regarding the status of Black individuals in the colony well before Johnson’s notable legal case. These records indicate that a significant number of Africans and their descendants were held in lifelong servitude, even if the law had not yet systematized racial slavery in explicit statutory terms.

The first documented Africans arrived in Virginia in August 1619, brought by English privateers who had seized them from a Portuguese slave ship. While some sources have characterized these individuals as indentured servants, the boundaries between indenture and slavery were, in practice, ambiguous and often determined by the will of white landowners and colonial courts. In fact, according to the research done by McColley, the terms " slave, servant, and negro were used interchangeably to refer to enslaved Africans, and were often determined by context. By the 1620s and 1630s, the Virginia colony’s labor force consisted of both European indentured servants and Africans, but the latter group faced increasingly severe restrictions and longer terms of service.

County court records from the 1630s reveal that Black Virginians were often denied the limited rights afforded to white indentured servants, such as the right to eventual freedom or land ownership. Many Africans and their children born in Virginia were retained in servitude for life, sometimes under the pretense of unending indenture but, in effect, as slaves. For example, court rulings from this period show Black individuals being sentenced to lifelong servitude for minor infractions, or simply by virtue of their status as Africans.

By the 1640s, the transition from ambiguous indentured servitude to explicit racial slavery was underway. The distinction between white and Black people was already being shaped by law, and lifelong slavery existed well before the Johnson-Casor case. The truth is, the development of a tobacco economy, along with an increased demand for a permanent labor force, is the cause of the rise of African slaves in the colonies.

Thus, the historical record is clear: long before Anthony Johnson’s civil suit over John Casor, Black people in Virginia were already being held as slaves, sometimes for life and sometimes across generations. Legal slavery was taking place in other colonies, as well as de facto slavery. The notion that Johnson was the first to hold a person in lifetime servitude is not only inaccurate, but it also erases the broader context of how racial slavery was being constructed and enforced by white colonists and the colonial legal system. Early Virginia was, from its inception, a society in which the enslavement of Africans evolved rapidly from a practice of convenience into a foundational institution, well before Johnson’s name ever appeared in the legal records.

The story of John Punch is particularly salient. In 1640, Punch, an African indentured servant in Virginia, attempted to escape bondage with two Europeans. When apprehended, the Europeans received additional years of servitude; Punch, however, was sentenced to lifelong slavery. This racially discriminatory punishment marks one of the earliest documented instances where African origin was explicitly used to justify perpetual enslavement. Punch’s case laid the groundwork for the legal codification of racial slavery that would come to define the American South.

The historical record is unequivocal: white colonists were the original enslavers in the English colonies. Slavery existed de facto and was later codified explicitly into law, independent of Anthony Johnson’s actions. The narrative positioning Johnson as the first legal slaveowner is not only misleading but also a deliberate distortion of history. Such revisionism serves to obscure the true origins of American slavery, placate African Americans, and deflect attention from the persistent structures of white supremacy and economic exploitation. Heaton said it himself that slavery was not “official” until 1661, when white men decided to make it official. But to be clearer, it was not “official in Virginia until that time, because, as delineated, other colonies had already legally recognized lifelong slavery. Heaton’s deliberate inconsistency in his video obfuscates these facts.

It is incumbent upon all who seek truth to challenge these distortions, to conduct rigorous research, and to reclaim the history that has been systematically denied or obfuscated. Accepting misinformation about the origins of slavery in America only perpetuates the disempowerment of African-descended peoples and undermines the ongoing struggle for liberation and historical clarity.