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Free Blacks in the 17th entury

acts in the 18th century, but this rationale is rather unfounded based on the idea that many African-Americans were in fact free and maintained their own farms in Virginia. The cause of slavery is much more subtle than a prejudice view of racial differences. The first African slaves arrived in Jamestown in 1619 as indentured servants4 , much like the poor whites in that area became in order to earn money and land to strike out on their own after their term of servitude had ended. Not too long after this event it was found that blacks could be bought cheaply and then kept for an unlimited term of bondage. This seemed a much more economical alternative to the indentured servant, to whom their owner would provide them with land after their term had ended. Many years would pass before the limitless bondage of slaves became common practice, it wasnt until 1680 that slavery became the foundation of the plantation. So it was in the interest of saving money rather than in racism that accounts for the enslavement of blacks. Through the life of Anthony Johnson and his family we can understand more fully the lives of other black men and women of his time and learn more of the development of slavery in the New World. We now know that the oppression of the race came as a result of the incline of he slave efforts rather than the reciprocal effect. And it was the growing need for land and possession by white farmers that diminished the free black as a social unit....

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