Some Not-So-Fun Facts For Slavery Apologists

According to slavery apologists (whom I imagine as a willfully ignorant mob of tiki-torch whites whose questionable grasp of American history is most likely the result of numerous meth lab explosions, inbreeding, and being fed a steady diet of Fox News), Anthony Johnson, a Black man, was responsible for what would eventually become chattel slavery in America.

It just so happened that Anthony Johnson — a captive African who arrived in the Virginia colony around 1621—was forced to labor on a tobacco farm probably as an indentured servant (indentured servitude being temporary whereas enslavement was forever with a lot fewer coffee breaks), though there have been claims that Johnson was actually enslaved.

Long story short, Anthony Johnson managed to keep his head down, peeped game, and gained his freedom which was actually pretty much on-brand back in the day for the unfree laborer class, regardless of race. And like Drake, Anthony Johnson (street name A-Jeezy) had come up after having indeed “started from the bottom” with his originally Angolan, Middle Passage survivor’s swagger. By no means an easy feat.

However, Anthony Johnson’s story doesn’t end just yet, because the dude was nowhere near done stuntin’. He had gotten married, fathered some children, became a wealthy landowner, and, get this, he even had his own indentured servants. Several of whom were said to be white.

But what happened next is why some wrongfully credit Anthony Johnson with introducing the evil institution of chattel slavery to this country.

Enter John Casor.

John Casor, also of African descent, claimed to be an indentured servant whose term had already expired, pulled up on Anthony Johnson with the help of a white planter, Robert Parker, and demanded his freedom in order to possibly pursue a career in stand-up. But on March 8, 1655, the Northhampton County Court found in favor of the big homie “Antonio” and ordered John Casor to “returne unto the service of his said master Anthony Johnson” for LIFE!

In addition, the court openly ridiculed John Casor’s brand of comedy as racist and unfunny for punching down on the hygiene habits (or severe lack thereof) of white colonists both wealthy landowners and unfree laborers, alike, in one of the earliest examples of cancel culture.

Still, Anthony Johnson could not have foreseen, centuries later, that that historic ruling would make him low-hanging fruit, an easy target for future slavery apologists to manufacture an egalitarian fantasy about chattel slavery that fails to survive the slightest scrutiny of a Google search.

Because John Casor was not the first Black man in the “New World” during the 17th century to be sentenced to a lifetime of enslavement. There was also the indentured servant John Punch who attempted to escape from his master, Hugh Gwyn, to start the Virginia colony’s first hip-hop record label (if the rumors are correct) along with two white unfree laborers of European descent.

The trio was quickly captured days later at a local coffee shop during a poetry slam but John Punch was the only one sentenced to a lifetime of enslavement on July 9, 1640, while the other two simply had their servitude extended. In other words, a legal precedent had been set, a distinction was made because the ruling was based on race. And as white colonists (who were already invested in the false narrative of African inferiority based on religion among other Eurocentric claptrap) relied more and more on African labor to expand their territory and defend against Indigenous attacks. Soon, the law would follow the growing trend.

In 1662, the Virginia law of partus sequitur ventrem, or “That which is born follows the womb” was passed and adopted by other colonies as well, which basically, meant that if your momma was enslaved then guess what? (It is also why I believe Black women literally birthed America into existence.) Thus, ushering in the nightmare that would become chattel slavery in America while also refuting the absurd notion of stereotypically “blaming the Black guy” for its creation.

“But seriously, how does the story of Anthony Johnson end?” Well, I’m glad you asked because despite his best efforts Johnson’s descendants, after his death in 1670, were subsequently defenseless against the growing tide of anti-Black racism, as evidenced by the confiscation of their land by the colony of Virginia. Many presume that they most likely lost their freedom and disappeared altogether from any historical records after the year 1730.

It is an irrefutable fact that chattel slavery in America was race-based. And to claim otherwise in the face of overwhelming evidence or to whimsically “pass the buck” to the very people it was designed to oppress as somehow being the originators of such a vile institution is a blatant display of cruelty with no bottom. It is one of many faulty arguments weaponized to shut down any current talk of reparations for African-Americans and for America to avoid any culpability for the many human rights violations and atrocities committed during chattel slavery’s centuries of existence.

No doubt, there were Black slavers in America. It remains an undisputed, historical truth supported by well-documented evidence. But to pretend as though chattel slavery was solely based on class rather than race is to ignore the many reasons for Blacks to own other Blacks, which includes but is not limited to securing the freedom of their family members or trying to simply survive a system that often pitted them against one another.

And there was also the constant threat to free Black people (born free or by manumission) of being forced or returned into bondage. Or as a Representative of Virginia, John Floyd, arguing against Black citizenship in 1821 queried: “Could not the States now seize their persons, and make them slaves?” Because what our African ancestors understood from day one on this continent is that their fate was largely in the hands of white men even those, like Anthony Johnson, who played by the rules.