Free Black Community on Virginia's Eastern Shore: Land, Law, and Erasure

By the 1650s–1660s, a small community of free Black landowners had established itself on Virginia's Eastern Shore, including Anthony and Mary Johnson, their son Richard, John Johnson, and others. These families owned land, went to court, and participated in colonial civic life. Over the following three decades, colonial legislation systematically destroyed this community: free Black people were barred from owning white servants (1670), stripped of voting rights, denied the ability to testify against white people, and had their estates subject to seizure. By 1700 the community had been legally and economically dismantled.