Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Sunday, April 7, 2019
ROOTS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN SLAVERY
The early, 1619, Jamestown, Virginia , Africans were not "slaves." They were indentured servants until 1660s, when Bacon's Rebellion (an unsuccessful revolt that was led by Nathaniel Bacon lof black and white indentured servants, who wanted some of the Indian land that was exclusively held by their colonial rulers ) was put down. Then, a Virginia court case decreed that an indentured servant of African descent (Punch) could be enslaved for life as a penalty for running away from his black master, Anthony Johnson, the plaintiff, himself formerly indentured. The colonial rulers combined both facts, the rebellion and court decree to create black chattel slavery and its infrastructure of lies, fake history in justification of racism. Before this there was no actual racism anywhere, but there was greed, avarice, duplicity cupidity, everywhere, even Africa, whose chieftains sold to Europeans and to Arabs, in exchange for goods: guns, powder, liquor.Racism did not stop at Jim Crow nor start at Jim Crow. It began in 1660s' Virginia and Maryland.