The Free Blacks of Virginia: A Personal Narrative, A Legal Construct

Abstract

The existence of the Free Blacks of Virginia as a group in United States history would surprise most Americans. The common narrative is that all Africans were brought to this country as slaves with no rights, and systematically received legal privileges after the Civil War in the 1860s and the Civil Rights struggle a century later. The reality differs from this assumption. The first Africans who landed on the shores of Virginia in 1619 began theirlives as indentured servants similar to many European immigrants. After finishing their terms of service, these Africans were accorded liberties such as the right to vote, own property, and import both European and African servants. The mid to late 1600s brought the legal transformation of Africans from servants for a term to servants for life, or slaves with no rights. The author employs her own family's history in Virginia to illustrate how the initial cluster of Free Blacks grew through manumissions and births at the same time as their legal rights were systematically and dramatically restricted. 'Sherri Burr is the Dickason Chair in Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law. She holds an A.B. degree from Mount Holyoke College, a M.P.A. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International affairs, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Burr is also the author of twenty books and the host, producer, and creator of ARTS TALK, a cable access television show focused on the arts. The author thanks University of New Mexico Law School Dean David Herring for granting her a 2014 summer research grant, Associate Dean Nathalie Martin for scheduling a faculty colloquium so the author could present her preliminary findings, and Associate Provost Virginia Scharff for inviting her to present a seven-minute synopsis of her work at the University of New Mexico's Lightning Lounge. Many thanks as well to Cheryl Burbank for her proofreading and cite-checking skills, and to law students Marissa Crollett, Mesa Lindgren, and Laura Melton for their research assistance. The author is grateful to Christa Dierksheide, who wrote Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas, for their meeting at the Jefferson Library in Virginia. Finally, the author expresses appreciation to the following individuals who read parts of the article and provided feedback:

Other Ways of Knowing: The Intersection of Education when Researching Family Roots

“…(Female, 75) Slavery is not something that is experienced by all African Americans. There were many blacks that were born free and some blacks owned slaves (Bottero 2015;Burr 2016;Dorsey 2009;Pressly 2006). This is one of the many surprises that some participants found as they continued the research.…”