# 136 First Slaveholder In America

I used the Interlibrary Loan System to get "The American People" by Nash and others. It was published in 1986 by which time white men had given up the truth and their manhood for political intimidation or correctness. The editors deceitfully opened Chapter 3, "Mastering the New World," on page 63 with a page devoted to the African Anthony Johnson and his family by telling how they had worked themselves out of being indentured servants and went on to own property and import servants. But the editors wrote that alas! indentured slavery was replaced by full-time, permanent slavery. This was lying by omission because the editors did not bother to state that Anthony Johnson had also legally changed the classification of one of his indentured servants, John Caison, an African, to that of a full-time, permanent slave, thus becoming the first slaveholder in America. The editors obviously didn't want their readers to know that the first man to hold black slaves in America was a black himself. Political intimidation at work.
An older source, "Virginia," published by the Virginia Writers' Association in 1940 is honest. It states that in 1653, an Anthony Johnson petitioned the Northampton Court for the return for life of runaway, black identured servant John Casor. Casor claimed he had already served seven years longer than he should have.
But the court awarded John Casor to Anthony Johnson for life. This was the first black made a slave in America except those who had been made slaves for life because of crimes they were judged to have committed. Peter "Two-Guns" Nickerson, MS,MSW at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.