The African Americans

by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

  It is certainly the case that relatively few slaves existed in the first decades of the Virginia colony, perhaps only 2,000 by 1671. Additionally, during this phase of colonial American history, slaves probably comprised only a quarter of all bound labor, the vast majority of which was white indentured servants.12 Early Virginia, for most of its residents, remained a harsh if not brutal environment in which a powerful elite contractually controlled the lives of the majority—many taken from city streets or cast-off second or third sons of the gentry class with no chance of inheritance in England—mostly to cultivate tobacco. And that small elite class did everything in its power to extend the length of the servants’ service. The colony, most certainly, was a place in which a few controlled the lives of the many.13

  Because Virginians did not codify the institution of slavery until the 1660s, and since the expansion of the institution did not occur until the 1680s and 1690s, one school of historians had concluded that early slavery began as a “fluid and permeable” form of “unfree” labor. But African slavery did not exist on an “unfree” continuum in which little distinction could be made between the lives of white indentured servants and black slaves. Revising decades of historical writing about the subject of colonial slavery, an emerging group of historians has recently uncovered a much different story that depicts 17th-century slavery as shockingly similar to that of much later periods.14 From the very beginning, English settlers understood slavery in all its harsh forms and only codified the practice when it became necessary after 1660, not because of unfamiliarity with the institution, but for economic reasons. The relative scarcity of slaves in the earliest periods can partially be explained by the limitations of available capital, but mostly was because the English obtained their slaves indirectly by raiding the vessels of Spain and Portugal, having no direct access to African markets.

  Moreover, the overwhelming number of Africans that lived in Virginia not only served for life, but their condition was passed on to their children, just as it would be in the 18th and 19th centuries. Tax, court, and probate records show that few Africans gained their freedom during this period, and those that did almost exclusively lived in one area, concentrated on the Eastern Shore.15

  HOW AFRICANS BECAME SLAVES AND EUROPEANS MASTERS IS A QUESTION THAT HISTORIANS HAVE DEBATED FOR GENERATIONS. When Europeans became involved in the African slave trade during the 15th century, slavery had been an accepted and acceptable institution since the beginning of civilization, and even was seen as a sign of human progress. Virtually all cultures practiced it, and in Europe beginning with Roman law, societies recognized slaves as both persons and things. In ancient Greece, the hearthstone of democracy, slaves were more widely owned than in antebellum America. Its ubiquity was a primary characteristic of society, with western Europeans enslaving Muslim Albanians, Bosnians, and other Slavs (the origins of the word slave), while Russians, Lithuanians, and Poles regularly enslaved one another’s war captives well into the 16th century. During the English Civil War, the Earl of Stamford asserted that Royalist soldiers who refused to join the forces of Parliament should be sold as slaves to the Barbary pirates. Even Oliver Cromwell threatened the Scots and the Irish with enslavement if they continued to resist his army. As Seymour Drescher, historian of slavery in the Western Hemisphere, recently wrote, “Judaism, Christianity and Islam viewed slavery as immutable as marriage and human warfare.”16

  In a world accustomed to slavery, anyone could end up in chains, as so many Europeans discovered in their encounter with the Muslim world, especially along the Barbary Coast. Historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood argue that even at the edge of the earth—in a distant frontier town like Jamestown—the English settlers would have shared an understanding (in practice, if not yet in law) of the Portuguese association of “Negro” with “slave,” although this association was not inevitable or unalterable in the Spanish world. As we have seen, many black people, such as Juan Garrido and a poet and professor called “el Negro, Juan Latino,” functioned as fully free men in Spain and in the Spanish colonies in the New World. The English settlers were well aware of the huge international traffic in black slaves that populated the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Caribbean and Latin America.

  Equally important, access to and control of labor determined who would gain wealth and power in colonial Virginia. Even in the early colonial period when there were relatively few slaves, the institution of slavery profoundly shaped the colony’s developing social structure. Who owned slaves, when they were purchased, and who possessed access to slave markets defined the institution of slavery and its development in colonial Virginia. During the colony’s first decades, few “planters” (just about anyone who grew tobacco) possessed sufficient wealth to buy slaves, even if they had been widely available. Those who did, however, overwhelmingly were the richer men who also held some kind of public office, concentrating wealth and political power in the hands of a few.

  Although in the first decades of the colony, few settlers could own slaves, it is also clear that even in the 1630s, a majority of those who held political office owned black slaves—and in the 1640s, one man owned 40. Additionally, where people lived in the colony and the access they had to London-based tobacco merchants helped decide who could own slaves. Thus, from the very outset, elements of the colony wanted and sought out permanent bound labor. As the number of financially capable men increased along with the availability of slaves, the number of slaves in Virginia increased, and with time the number of non-elite planters able to purchase slaves increased quite dramatically.

  What the English thought of “Africans” in 1619 is difficult to say with finality. Prior to colonization, Englishmen—certainly Londoners—were familiar with people of African descent, as was the royal court. At times they used the words African, Moor, and Blackamoor interchangeably, and in other cases appeared to distinguish between North Africans and those of the sub-Saharan region. Samuel Pepys, for instance, mentions some Africans in his famed diary and recorded a case in which one William Batten left “a handsomely paid guardianship” to a black man. Londoners on any given day could certainly encounter black women and men as laundresses, servants, maids, professional soldiers, pages, entertainers, goldsmiths, needle makers, metalworkers, and even a diver, a royal page, a trumpeter, and a monk. In 1501, a Spanish princess visited London and included black people in her royal retinue.17

  Young Negress, by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1645. Etching. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; bequest of Edwin de T. Bechtel, Harvard University.

  It is worth noting that there are very few negative visual images of Africans during this early period, whether in English paintings or prints. In English literature, however, we find a range of associations with black people and blackness. For example, in the popular Geographical History by Leo Africanus, translated into English in 1600, the Kingdom of Timbuktu emerges as a “well-ordered, prosperous, civilized society in which learning flourished as well as trade….”18

  Yet given the country’s class structure and the kinds of positions that black people largely filled, the English, whatever intrinsic or received understanding they had of sub-Saharan Africans, certainly had been accustomed to seeing them on a daily basis in subordinate roles: as servants, in various other lower-class positions, or even as slaves—however well treated. And inevitably, associations between black Africans and animals found their way into English literature: a poem by the 15th-century poet William Dunbar described one black woman at court as having “protruding lips like an ape,” and even in Shakespeare’s depiction of Othello as the “noble Moor,” Iago uses animal and sexual associations to turn Othello’s father-in-law against him. Additionally, Elizabeth I in 1596 and 1601 (unsuccessfully) ordered the expulsion of “negars and blackamoors” from England. Even in the era of Thomas More, the term Ethiopian represented a pejorative to describe people of African descent.19

  There is certainly ambiguity in the earliest English views of Africa. But by the era of c
olonization, Englishmen had long been accustomed to living alongside black people. While English colonists might make exceptions for especially learned Africans or those belonging to royalty, anti-black racist views hardened fairly rapidly and all too easily, rendering most blacks an alien people and fit subjects for permanent servitude. Soon—and likely well before the slave codes of the 1660s—the blackness of a person’s skin became a signifier of status, a signal that such people should be considered property and inferior by nature, to be held in perpetual bondage, a fact that Morgan Godwyn makes clear in his impassioned defense of the common humanity of Africans and Indians with Europeans, against racist aspersions cast against their “nature” as early as 1680.

  The relatively small number of early Africans who managed to become free in colonial Virginia were in all likelihood slaves and never had been indentured servants, since there is no proof that any were given a contract. Nevertheless, a small group of emancipated slaves, against the greatest odds, managed to thrive, at least for a time. John Graweere used his skills keeping hogs to buy his own freedom and, most astonishingly, successfully brought suit in court to win the freedom of his son:

  And whereas the said negro having a young child of a negro woman belonging to Lieut. Robert Sheppard which he desired should be made a christian and be taught and exercised in the church of England, by reason whereof he the said negro did for his said child purchase its freedom of Lieut. Sheppard with the good liking and consent of Tho: Gooman’s overseer as by the deposition of the said Sheppard and Evans appeareth, the court hath therefore ordered that the child shall be free from the said Evans or his assigns and to be and remain at the disposing and education of the said Graweere and the child’s godfather who undertaketh to see it brought up in the christian religion as aforesaid.20

  One of the most celebrated instances of a free colonial-era black is that of “Antoney,” most probably from Angola and perhaps one of the “20. And Odd” Africans who landed in Jamestown in 1619. The muster list of 1625 states that Antoney and his wife had a child together named William, whom they baptized (as they would their future children). They remained together for almost 50 years. By 1635, Antoney; his wife, Mary; and their entire family enjoyed freedom. He changed his name to Anthony Johnson, acquired a large tract of land—250 acres—and a slave of his own, named John Casor. Anthony Johnson became a prosperous man and lived the life of an English colonial planter. One of his sons even acquired 450 acres of land. In 1665, Johnson took his herd of livestock and moved to Somerset County, Maryland. In 1667, his grandson John purchased 44 acres on the east side of Chesapeake Bay and named it “Angola,” recognizing his family’s African heritage.

  Just 40 years after the first “20. And Odd” blacks landed on these shores, however, all Africans arriving in Virginia were legally defined as slaves, to be held in bondage for life. When Anthony Johnson died in 1670, a Virginia court ruled that he was “a negro and by consequence, an alien,” and a white Virginian planter was allowed to seize Johnson’s land because “as a black man, Anthony Johnson was not a citizen of the colony.”21

  Despite the Johnsons and a few other examples, manumissions, whether through self-purchase or the kindness of masters, rarely happened during the early years of slavery in Virginia. In an era of intense labor shortages and intensely unequal distribution of wealth, freeing one’s working property simply made no economic sense. With great clarity, we can now see that the institution of slavery did not emerge gradually, unthinkingly, or accidentally out of indentured servitude. Instead, it came full born, borne by the sails of wooden ships, learned from the previous century of other Europeans treating black women and men as property. In Virginia, well-connected planters with political power and access to markets developed the institution in phases, based on “wealth, location, and economic need.” They sought slaves as white men in the 19th century sought gold and in the 20th century sought oil: with drive, greed, and ambition, fueling an efficient and profitable institution, which grew along with the reach of the British Empire.22

  From 1501 to 1830, as we have seen, about 388,000 African slaves were shipped directly from Africa to North America. During the same period, about four million slaves landed in the Caribbean, with the larger portion going to Haiti and Cuba. Yet by 1830, the black populations of both regions were astonishingly similar: about 2.3 million in North America and 2.4 million in the Caribbean. (Brazil, incredibly, received about five million slaves.) The shocking numbers had as much to do with more favorable living conditions in North America for both whites and blacks (and slightly higher birth rates for both groups) as it did with an exacting Caribbean work regime that required a higher rate of slave importation to replace the deceased. As it turns out, recent migrants suffered higher death rates than those of African descent born in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, with the near insatiable demand for new slaves in the Caribbean to meet European requirements for agricultural goods—especially sugar—the death rates proved higher among the larger Caribbean population, retarding growth.23

  Despite the high mortality rates, and perhaps spurred by them, the number of slave imports steadily increased, with a large percentage coming from West Central Africa—from whence hailed approximately 45 percent of all the Africans enslaved and shipped to the Americas before 1866.

  SUCH A TRADE WAS ONLY POSSIBLE BECAUSE AFRICAN LEADERS SAW GREAT ADVANTAGE IN SELLING OTHER AFRICANS TO EUROPEAN TRADERS. One prominent example is that of Queen Nzinga (1583–1663), who ruled the Kingdom of Ndongo in what is now Angola from 1624 until her death in 1663. Converted to Roman Catholicism by the Portuguese, she adopted the Christian name of Ana de Sousa and employed her religious conversion to political advantage throughout her life. She fought wars against the Portuguese and negotiated a series of complex diplomatic alliances with both European and other African states to preserve her power and her kingdom. Because of her leadership, military prowess (she led troops into battle), and heroic struggle, she is still celebrated in Africa as a symbol of independence and strength.24

  Slave Market of Cairo, by David Roberts, 1846–1849. Lithograph. Library of Congress.

  But slavery was essential to her political and military power, as it was to the region more generally. Slavery thrived in West Africa (and elsewhere) long before contact with Europeans and remained a central institution throughout the 19th century. Especially in Muslim regions, such as the Sokoto Caliphate of present-day northern Nigeria, slavery became the backbone of the economy. Slaves proved essential to all sectors of society, from local cottage industries and military life to farming and harems. Slaves, as had been the case since the 15th century, were a valuable form of currency, regularly used to pay tribute to political capitals and a far more common medium of exchange than even gold was. As late as the turn of the 20th century, this caliphate very likely possessed as many slaves as existed in the whole of the American South on the eve of the Civil War, about four million. Indeed, the internal trade remained so strong and so integral to the region that it constituted a “demographic policy of relocation on a gigantic scale.”25

  Queen Nzinga, published 1780. Hand-colored engraving. Private Collection/The Stapleton Collection Bridgeman Art Library.

  From an African perspective, whether as leaders or common people, Europeans were largely irrelevant to the actual enslavement of individuals. While this notion flies in the face of our common assumptions about the history of the enslavement of Africans, the institution of slavery and the trade in slaves to Europeans in West and Central Africa was more a manifestation of local politics and economic structures, resulting primarily from the many wars that plagued central West Africa, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, than it was an institution forcibly imposed on Africans by Europeans. The transatlantic slave trade resulted from a mutuality of commercial interests between various African elites and European merchants. It surprises many of us today to learn that Europeans sold guns to African monarchs, rather than dominated them with arms.

  Sl
avery existed before and long after the European arrival, and the European presence was largely confined to the coast, centered in “factories” or forts that functioned as trading posts. (The Portuguese presence in Angola was an exception to this rule.) Very few Europeans penetrated the African interior for a very long time, which is one of the reasons that the West was riveted by newspaper accounts of Henry Morton Stanley’s search for Dr. David Livingstone in 1871. Moreover, the dominance and colonization of Africa and its attendant subdivisions, which resulted in the nation-states created after independence in the late 1950s and early ’60s, only occurred after the Congress of Berlin in 1884. In the experience of West Central Africans, as the historian John K. Thornton has emphasized, war brought destruction, murder, rape, injury, loss of property, cannibalism, and even the loss of personal belongings and clothing, but it especially brought slavery. Slavery represented a ubiquitous “solution to problems raised by war.”26