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Chapter 1

Enslaving Colonial North America

Painting of a white overseer watching enslaved women work in the field

The Chesapeake: Making Race

Whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, be it . . . enacted . . . children . . . shall be held bond or free . . . according to the condition of the mother.

Senegambia

3,900

Sierra Leone

4,500

Windward Coast

5,500

Gold Coast

18,000

Bight of Benin

4,000

Bight of Biafra

58,000

Western Central Africa

26,000

Madagascar

2,900

One hundred and four Englishmen arrive in Virginia

1607

First commercial crop of tobacco is shipped to England

1617

First people of African descent brought to Point Comfort in Virginia

1619

Children are born slave or free depending on the status of their mother

1662

Law enforces slavery for life

1664

No Black person (whether slave or free) may carry weapons, travel without a pass, or lift a hand against a white person

1680

Free Black persons and white persons married to Black persons are banished from the colony

1691

“All negro, mulatto, and Indian slaves are considered real estate”

1705

It is legal to kill an unruly slave

1705

Virginia abolishes voting rights for free Black people and Indians

1715