1640s

In 1640 a Virginia court ruled that John Punch, a runaway African servant who was recaptured along with two white servants, would serve his master for life, while the white servants received only extended indentures. This is considered by many historians to be the first legal codification of racial slavery in the American colonies, and Punch is thus a pivotal figure in the history of American slavery. DNA research has suggested Punch may be an ancestor of Barack Obama through his mother's side.

The Dutch West India Company grants freedom and land to eleven Black men — including Anthony and Lucy D'Angola, Paul D'Angola, and Big Manuel — who had petitioned after years of labor. They receive plots in lower Manhattan along what is now Greenwich Village, forming one of North America's first documented free Black communities and landowning class.

Anthony Johnson and his wife Mary, both formerly enslaved Africans who arrived in Virginia in the early 1620s, built a successful farm on Virginia's Eastern Shore and employed both white and Black servants. By the 1650s they held over 250 acres of land and Anthony successfully sued in colonial court to retain an indentured servant, demonstrating that early colonial legal structures allowed some Black people to exercise property rights and legal standing. Their story represents the narrow window of relative freedom that existed for some Black Virginians before racial slavery was fully codified.