When the first Africans arrived aboard a Dutch slave ship in 1619, status and belonging in colonial Virginia society depended much more heavily on one’s religion or whether one owned property than it did on skin color or any notion of race. The stories of two Virginians of African descent—Anthony Johnson and Elizabeth Key—help to illustrate this fact.
Anthony Johnson, who arrived from Africa in 1621, was initially enslaved by a Virginia family from England, but he was permitted to obtain his freedom sometime in the first few decades after his arrival. It is not clear how he did so, but at the time those held in slavery were sometimes granted freedom by their owners, or, more often, they were allowed to farm a plot of their owner’s land, sell the crops, and purchase their freedom from the profits. By 1640, Anthony had married a woman named Mary (who was also enslaved), started a family, and acquired a sizeable farm of his own. When a fire destroyed much of the Johnson plantation in 1653, local officials noted that the Johnsons were “inhabitants in Virginia above thirty years” who were respected for their “hard labor and known service,” and they excused Mary and the couple’s two daughters from paying taxes for the rest of their lives. The ruling allowed the family to rebuild. In issuing the ruling, officials ignored a Virginia law that required that “all free Negro men and women” pay special taxes.
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