Sep 16, 2016 Orange County Review
As the study of Orange County’s free Negro population continues, a general understanding of the laws regarding these special Virginians should be enlightening.
The laws pertaining to people of color established as early as 1619 by Virginia’s colonial legislature are without debate a central theme in the governmental work of our forefathers. Tracking the amendments, new laws, and consequences to non-compliance is exhausting and far more complex than one can cover in a brief column.
Nonetheless, a grasp—even if at a somewhat over-simplified level—is informative and arguably necessary to a more civil existence; and so shall we begin.
The first Negroes landed in 1619 at Jamestown as indentured servants, (but free of life-long bondage) on soil that would eventually become the Commonwealth of Virginia. There was a vast need for labor in the burgeoning colony serviced adequately for 75 years by both blacks and whites willing to trade their prescribed “temporary” employment for passage to the New World and boundless possibilities.
In 1619, 20 indentured Negroes landed in Jamestown. By 1640, the number had increased to 150 and, by 1650, to 300. Between 1680 and 1704, the number escalated from 3,000 to 10,000.
The growth is attributed to an intensified demand for labor; a reduction in the number of white servants making their way to the colonies and a seemingly endless supply of people of color provided by the success of the Atlantic slave trade.
The rising number would have a drastically negative impact on the lives of free or eventually-to-be-freed blacks in the Virginia Colony; a disastrous actuality that would be inherited by their future generations as well.
Wealth—the desire to acquire it and an equal desire to keep it--served to motivate new legislation, debated and enacted by the ruling legislators who were none other than those same plantation owners who were fretting over the mounting costs of free labor.
By the end of the first 100-plus years, these are a few of the Black laws legislated by the Colonial leadership:
1660s: the term “slave” was accepted as a legal premise for class
1662: children of Englishmen and Negro women were to be designated as “slave” or “free” based on the legal status of their mother.
1681: Negroes could be emancipated only on the condition that the owner pay for transportation for the freedman out of Virginia within six months.
Intermarriage between whites and Negroes bond or free was outlawed and punishment was exile from Virginia.
1705: “No Negro, Mulatto or Indian could purchase any Christian servant, except of their own complexion, as slaves.”
1723: “Negro and Indian slaves could not be set free except for meritorious service which was to be so adjudged by the Governor and the Council. If slaves were freed without the approval of the Governor and Council, the parish church wardens were to sell the emancipated slave at public auction.”
If it is true that knowledge is power, then do we need a better reason to study all the facts related to our shared American history? For more detail, please read “Black Laws of Virginia” by June Purcell Guild. Stay tuned for the next chapter.
Until next week, be well.