History of African Americans in Virginia

Date: 1619 [unknown]
Location: Virginia, United States
Surnames/tags: Black_Heritage Virginia

The Virginia Team covers activity for the US Black Heritage Project in the state of Virginia.

A Brief History of African-Americans in Virginia

It all started in Virginia: The first known Africans in what would later become the United States of America arrived in the Colony of Virginia. Likely originating in west central Africa, they disembarked at Point Comfort in late August, 1619. From the English ships White Lion and the Treasurer came “20 and odd Negroes” plus “two or three additional Africans,” respectively, received in trade from the ships in exchange for food. At the first muster (census) in March of 1620, it was reported that the Colony had 32 Africans–15 males and 17 females. In 1625, the first recorded child of African descent was born in the Colony; his name was William, and his parents were Anthony and Isabella, both serving in the household of Captain William Tucker of Elizabeth City. “The African population in Virginia increased dramatically when, in 1628, the ship Fortune, out of Massachusetts Bay, captured a Portuguese slaver carrying about 100 Angolans, whom the captain sold in Virginia for tobacco.”^[1]

Free People of Color: There were also early free people of color in the Colony. In the 1624 muster, Antonio was living at Edward Bennett‘s plantation on the lower side of the James River near the former Native American town of Warraskoyack. Antonio had arrived in Virginia aboard the James in 1621. “In March 1622, [Antonio] was one of just a handful of people who managed to survive Opechancanough’s attack on the [Bennett] plantation, and he eventually gained his freedom [emphasis supplied]. At some point, Antonio wed a woman named Mary, who had come to Virginia in 1622 on the Margaret and John, and the two lived as Anthony and Mary Johnson in Northampton County on the Eastern Shore. There, they raised four children and by the 1650s owned 250 acres of land.”^[1]

Growth of slavery: By 1860, there were more than 550,000 enslaved Black people in Virginia, constituting one third of the state’s total population.^[2]

Abolitionist Movement in Virginia: In May of 1782, Virginia's General Assembly allowed slave holders to free their slaves without government approval.^[3] Many Virginians did so, sometimes during their lifetimes, and sometimes at their deaths in their wills. On 1 August 1791, Robert Carter III famously set in motion the legal means to free 452 enslaved men and women, with the intention to free 15 every following January (in the years that followed, he freed more than the planned 15 each year, totaling more than 500 people freed from slavery).^[4]

• History of Slavery in Virginia at Wikipedia

Black History Timeline in Virginia

This portion still under construction. ^[5]

1607 Jamestown is founded in Virginia.

1619 Approximately 20+ blacks from a Dutch slaver are purchased as indentured workers for the English settlement of Jamestown. These are the first Africans in the English North American colonies.

1624 The first African American child born free in the English colonies, William Tucker, is baptized in Virginia.

1642 Virginia passes a fugitive slave law. Offenders helping runaway slaves are fined in pounds of tobacco. An enslaved person is to be branded with a large R after a second escape attempt.

1651 Anthony Johnson, a free African American, imports several enslaved Africans and is given a grant of land on Virginia's Puwgoteague River Other free African Americans follow this pattern.

1655 Anthony Johnson successfully sues for the return of his slave John Casor, whom the court had earlier treated as an indentured servant.

1657 Virginia amends its fugitive slave law to include the fining of people who harbor runaway slaves. They are fined 30 pounds of tobacco for every night they provide shelter to a runaway slave.

1662 Virginia reverses the presumption of English law that the child follows the status of his father, and enacts a law that makes the free or enslaved status of children dependent on the status of the mother.

1663 Black and white indentured servants plan a rebellion in Gloucester County, Virginia. Their plans are discovered and the leaders are executed.

1663 A planned revolt of enslaved Africans and indentured servants is uncovered in Gloucester County, Virginia.

1664 In Virginia, the enslaved African's status is clearly differentiated from the indentured servant's when colonial laws decree that enslavement is for life and is transferred to the children through the mother. Black and slave become synonymous, and enslave

1667 Virginia declares that baptism does not free a slave from bondage, thereby abandoning the Christian tradition of not enslaving other Christians.

1670 The Virginia Assembly enact law that allows all non-Christians who arrive by ship to be enslaved.

1672 Virginia law now bans prosecution for the killing of a slave if the death comes during the course of his his or her apprehension.

1676 Nathaniel Bacon leads an unsuccessful rebellion of whites and blacks against the English colonial government in Virginia.

1680 Virginia enacts a law that forbids all blacks from carrying arms and requires enslaved blacks to carry certificates at all times when leaving the slaveowner's plantation.

1682 A new slave code in Virginia prohibits weapons for slaves, requires passes beyond the limits of the plantation and forbids self-defense by any African Americans against any European American.

1691 Virginia enacts a new law which punishes white men and women for marrying black or Indians. Children of such interracial liaisons become the property of the church for 30 years.

1705 The Colonial Virginia Assembly defined as slaves all servants brought into the colony who were not Christians in their original countries as well as Indians sold to the colonists by other Native Americans.

1727 Enslaved Africans and Native Americans revolt in Middlesex and Gloucester Counties in Virginia.

1758 The African Baptist or Bluestone Church is founded on the William Byrd plantation near the Bluestone River, in Mecklenburg, Virginia, becoming the first known black church in North America

1762 Virginia restricts voting rights to white men.

1774 First African Baptist Church, one of the earliest black churches in the United States, is founded in Petersburg, Virginia.

1775 On Nov. 7, Lord Dunmore, British Governor of Virginia declares all slaves free who come to the defense of the British Crown against the Patriot forces. Dunmore eventually organizes the first regiment of black soldiers to fight under the British flag.

1800 On August 30, Gabriel Prosser attempts a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia.

1802 James Callender claims that Thomas Jefferson has for many years past kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves, Sally Hemings. His charge is published in the Richmond Recorder that month, and the story is soon picked up by the Federalist press around

1831 Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia, killing at least 57 whites.

1865 Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9 at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War.

1882 The Virginia State Assembly established the first state mental hospital for African Americans and locates it near Petersburg.

1883 On November 3, white conservatives in Danville, Virginia, seize control of the local racially integrated and popularly elected government, killing four African Americans in the process.

1888 Two of America's first black-owned banks, the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of the Reformers, in Richmond, Virginia, and Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C, open their doors.

1900 In September Nannie Helen Burroughs leads the founding of the Women's' Convention of the National Baptist Convention at its meeting in Richmond, Virginia.

1903 Maggie Lena Walker founds St. Lukes Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia.

1963 Wendell Oliver Scott became the first black driver to win a major NASCAR race, the Grand National (now Winston Cup) race.

1977 On March 8, Henry L. Marsh III became the first African American mayor of Richmond, Virginia

1989 On November 7, L. Douglas Wilder wins the governorship of Virginia, making him the first African American to be popularly elected to that office. On the same day David Dinkins and Norm Rice are the first African Americans elected as mayors of New York and

1990 Marcelite Jordan Harris is the first black woman brigadier general in the U.S. Army and the first woman to command a mostly male battalion.

1997 Lois Jean White is the first African American to be elected president of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA).

2000 Lillian Elaine Fishbourne is the first black woman admiral in the U.S. Navy.

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} McCartney, Martha. Africans, Virginia’s First. (2022, March 22). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/africans-virginias-first.
2. ↑ Slavery. Virginia Museum of History & Culture. (n.d.). Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://virginiahistory.org/learn/story-of-virginia/chapter/slavery
3. ↑ General Assembly. An act to authorize the manumission of slaves (1782). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/an-act-to-authorize-the-manumission-of-slaves-1782.
4. ↑ Robert Carter and manumission. Bill of Rights Institute. (n.d.). Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/robert-carter-and-manumission
5. ↑ History of slavery and institutional racism, state by State. Reparations 4 Slavery. (2022, April 10). Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://reparations4slavery.com/history-of-slavery-and-institutional-racism-state-by-state/