Lies that Bind Us

12:11 AM (9 hours ago)

to me

James -

Hope all is well with you.

In the Lies that Bind Us, you write something very interesting:

“The fact was blacks owned whites in Virginia for a full generation before it was outlawed”

I’ve never heard this before and find it something useful to shock some people into reconsidering how much they don’t know about the origins of America. Can you point me to any examples of this?

Thanks

Clark

In the book So Her Master May Have Her Again, I cover the story of of a free woman of color who bought an Irish lass in South Carolina in 1778 and then tortured and killed her in Spanish New Orleans in 1781, and became the only slave owner in North America to ever be punished for killing a slave.

Check it out: Her Black Masters, pages 139-42

In Crackerboy, I have the following citations, and many more, which demonstrate free none-white status and also sexual access to unfree white women by none-white men for which the women were held responsible. Also note the ability to retrieve runaway white women by none whites, recognized in court, as well as numerous cases of non-whites winning civil suits against whites in 1700s Maryland and Virginia in the Section Yellow Negroes, on pages 62-88 of Crackerboy.

Chronologically, from page 157:

1670

Jamestown, Virginia

"Indians and negroes, manumitted and otherwise free" were prohibited from purchasing "Christian servants" not "of their owne nation."

Notes

Note that the terms race and white are not in use in 1670.

Also, in the same statute, we see declared that there are Christian "servants for life" in Virginia.

Note also that the right to bear arms and vote in Virginia was not taken from African Americans until the period between 1710-30.

Additionally, in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, no racial stipulation was placed on voting or office holding, only that the person was a man of age and free.

From page 76:

1735-38

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY, Virginia

Servant Ann Jones, owned by a man named West, who claimed to have been impregnated by a “East Indian” servant named Pompey belonging to another master, after delivering her child was whipped for the crime of being impregnated while un-free. No such order was given for Pompey.

Notes

Ann's child would be un-free and serve 31 years under a master assigned by church authorities. This might have been a planned rape sanctioned by the two masters to keep Ann in bondage and produce another servant. This was commonly done in the early 1800s to African American women such as the mother of William Wells Brown, and was done to a German servant woman in New Orleans in 1838 as related by William Craft in my book So Her Master May Have Her Again, on page 31 of that book and also here: ‘No Trace Of African Descent’

From page 74:

February 13 1752

Caroline City, Maryland

An “East Indian Man” produces a warrant for a runaway [white] servant woman.

Notes

We do not know from the record if this man was the owner of the woman or if he were an agent for or even a servant of the owner of the woman. However, numerous men from India and China and possibly Madagascar or Indonesia won court cases against Christian slave masters in Maryland and Virginia in the early 1700s, having proven through their literacy, that they had been unjustly abducted in their homeland and sold into The Plantations. The only functional barrier to freedom and also of trafficking in other humans, in the 1700s was literacy.

You can get Cracker-boy here at our site e-store or buy it on the South American River.