Slave Ownership laws and resulting attitudes may have influenced our own attitudes today unless we analyze them for accuracy

We can glean from early court records is that of "Antonio the negro," as he was named in the 1625 Virginia census. He was brought to the colony in 1621.

At this time, English and Colonial law did not define racial slavery; the census calls him not a slave but a "servant." Later, Antonio changed his name to Anthony Johnson, married an African American servant named Mary, and they had four children. Mary and Anthony also became free, and he soon owned land and cattle and even indentured servants of his own.

By 1650, Anthony was still one of only 400 Africans in the colony among nearly 19,000 settlers. In Johnson's own county, at least 20 African men and women were free, and 13 owned their own homes.

In 1640, the year Johnson purchased his first property, three servants fled a Virginia plantation. Caught and returned to their owner, two had their servitude extended four years. However, the third, a black man named John Punch, was sentenced to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life." He was made a slave.

In 1662, Virginia decided all children born in the colony to a slave mother would be enslaved.

Slavery was not only a life-long condition; now it could be passed, like skin color, from generation to generation.

In 1665, Anthony Johnson moved to Maryland and leased a 300-acre plantation, where he died five years later. But back in Virginia that same year, a jury decided the land Johnson left behind could be seized by the government because he was a "negro and by consequence an alien."

Most ancient and medieval cultures had slaves. In some societies it was more common than in others. Sometimes the person was described a slave sometimes as a serf. A slave is a person who is considered the property of somebody else. According to the laws of the place in the times they used to live in, during these terrible historic epochs, anyone could be captured and sold for profit.

Slaves are then forced to work without being paid for any kind of work the owner wanted them to carry out. Today there exists the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. Next