Late 1500’s - Wahunsenacawh, the mamanatowick (Paramount Chief) of the Powhatan people created a confederacy of 30 groups, each with a weroance (leader, commander) representing between 14,000 and 21,000 eastern Algonquian speaking peoples in an area of about 8,000 square miles called Tsencommacah (“Densely inhabited land”) inhabited by the Paspahegh people . Today that area is called Richmond, Virginia.
1585 - Wahunsenacawh discovers English immigrants illegally crossed the Tsencommacah border. As part of a scheme by Walter Raleigh and Richard Hakluyt to export England’s growing number of unemployed in order to create new markets and increase the riches of the British Crown while at the same time establishing a military base to attack Spanish settlements, Queen Elizabeth supported this early group of immigrants. To sell the idea, the true purpose was concealed and spreading Christianity to the Powhatan was promoted. By 1590, the settlement was found deserted.
1607 – The English immigrants set up a squatter’s camp along the north bank of the Powhatan River. Conflicts began immediately. The English immigrants fired gun shots as soon as they arrived. Within two weeks, the English immigrants had already killed Paspahegh people. In December, Opechancanough, the brother of Wahunsenacawh, captured the leader of 105 English immigrants while trying to illegally cross the Chickahominy River. John Smith was taken to Werowocomoco, the Powhatan capital in Tsencommacah.
1608 – In December, the English immigrants suffered through the winter and were starving. The Wahunsenacawh offered to sell them a shipload of corn in exchange for a grindstone, fifty swords, some guns, a cock, a hen, copper, beads, and some men to build him an English-style house. On December 29, Smith headed for Werowocomoco by sea with a small force planning to ambush Wahunsenacawh.
1609 – Smith arrives at Werowocomoco on January 12th. Wahunsenacawh, aware of the planned ambush, met Smith’s armed men with his own armed force. Smith and the English immigrants resisted the Werowocomoco authority and refused to disarm. Smith’s party stole the corn and traveled up the Pamunkey River. There, they held Opechancanough at gunpoint while they stole food and supplies.
1610 – Illegal English immigration continued. Wahunsenacawh said, “Your coming is not for trade, but to invade my people and possess my country…Having seen the death of all my people thrice… I know the difference of peace and were better than any other Country.” Under the instruction of the London Company, Thomas Gates set out to “Christianize” the Powhatan Confederacy. Starting with the Kecoughtan people, Gates lured the Indians into the open by means of music-and-dance and then slaughtered them, initiating the First Anglo-Powhatan War in June.
1619 – The human trafficking of African people began with twenty people brought to Tsencommacah by shareholders of the Virginia Company of London.
1622 – In the Spring, an illegal English immigrant murdered the Powhatan General and Secretary of Defense Nemattanew. In response, the Powhatan Confederacy launched military raids on 31 illegal English squatter settlements along the Powhatan River. 347 illegal English immigrants were killed resisting Powhatan authority. This was the second Anglo-Powhatan War.
1624 – more than 4,000 English immigrants illegally crossed into Tsencommacah. The British Government took direct control of the illegal English squatter’s camps and designated them a royal colony of England.
1636 - Colonial North America's slave trade begins when the first American slave carrier, Desire, is built and launched in Massachusetts.
1641 - Massachusetts is the first colony to legalize slavery.
1643 - The New England Confederation of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven adopts a fugitive slave law.
1644 – Third Anglo-Powhatan War. The Manatowick Opechancanough, who was over 90 years old by this time, was captured. While a prisoner, he was shot in the back and killed by an English terrorist and gang leader assigned to guard him.
1646 – The Treaty of 1646 marks the effective dissolution of the Powhatan Confederacy.
1649 – the House of Burgesses lifts the northern border demarcating the territory reserved for English immigrants in the Treaty of 1646, resulting in a wave of new English immigrants flooding the peninsular region known as Chickagoan.
1650 - Connecticut legalizes slavery.
1657 - Virginia passes a fugitive slave law.
1660 - Charles II, King of England, orders the Council of Foreign Plantations to devise strategies for converting slaves and servants to Christianity.
1662 – The General Assembly of the Virginia Colony passes legislation making a “mulatto’s child” status as free or slave dependent upon the condition of the child’s mother. The law permitted and encouraged the sexual violation of black women as a means of increasing plantation wealth. This law worked to render children of women of African descent human capital. Black women were thus transformed into a machine for capitalist production and the enrichment of wealthy English immigrants. The law also made English women the only possible production site of “pure” English children. A fine was also imposed for sexual intimacy outside of marriage when one party was “English or Christian” and the other party was “negro”.
1663 - Maryland legalizes slavery.
1664 – The Colonial Assembly of Maryland enacted a law that punished a woman who was “English or freeborn” who married a black slave. New York and New Jersey legalize slavery
1668 – Virginia enacts a law making free women of African descent tithable.
1670 – more and more chattel bond servants were completing their term of servitude and becoming freed tenants. This meant more competition for large landholders as freed tenants sought their own fortunes in tobacco. This posed a threat for the English authorities in Virginia. They responded to this threat by extending the years of servitude through penalties for violations such as running away, giving birth to a child or killing a hog. Another law forbids non-Europeans to be owners of Christian bond laborers. Another law was enacted whereby only landowners could vote in elections, stripping the freed tenants from voting. By this time, the poor and homeless immigrants sent by England slowed significantly, leaving a gap in the labor supply. Wealthy English immigrants looked elsewhere for labor, and the human trafficking of African people started to increase.
1676 – Discontent among laborers, both European and African, bond and free, erupted in a fight against unpaid labor and plantation elites. The leader of the rebellion, Nathaniel Bacon, and a number of his neighbors held contempt for the native Doeg people whom they blamed for the deaths of plantation owner Thomas Mathew’s two sons after Mathew refused to pay the Doeg for goods they had traded. Bacon and his group were also frustrated with the response of the English government authorities in the Virginia Colony, particularly Governor William Berkeley. On May 10, Bacon attacked the Doeg and besieged the Susquehannock. Following this, the Doeg made an alliance with the Nanzatico. While Bacon continued to attack the Doeg, other rebel groups plundered the estates of government loyalists. The threat of a united labor force to the capitalist plantation system was made clear. The governing elite decided to divide and conquer, separate one group with the authority to rule over and oppress the other. In her book, Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People And Its Relevance Today, Jacqueline Battalora quotes historian Gary Nash “in describing the process of imposing slavery upon persons of African descent following Bacon’s Rebellion: ‘In rapid succession Afro Americans lost their right to testify before a court, to engage in any kind of commercial activity, either as buyer or seller; to hold property; to participate in the political process; to congregate in public places with more than two or three of their fellows; to travel without permission; and to engage in legal marriage or parenthood.” According to Theodore W. Allen, the response to the rebellion was the creation of a new social status that would be a birthright of Anglos as well as Europeans in North America, a ‘white’ identity designed to set them apart from African bond laborers as well as enlist Europeans across class lines as active or passive supporters of capitalist agriculture based on chattel bond labor.’”
1681 The label “white” first appears in law. The Colonial Assembly of the Colony of Maryland passed an enactment that stated, “And for as much diverse freeborn English or White woman sometimes by the Instigacon Procurement or Convenience of their Masters Mistress or dames….do intermarry with Negroes & Slaves….” There is a switch from the 1664 legislation from the terms “English or freeborn” to that of “white” women. Battalora notes that, “These laws reveal that those who were members of native tribes or of African descent were viewed as sufficiently unlike the British so as to warrant separate labels and exclusion from the full package of rights and privileges that the British and those considered sufficiently like them enjoyed. This was true prior to Bacon’s Rebellion, at least among lawmakers. What is striking after Bacon’s Rebellion is the label given to those who were not ‘Negroes or mulattos or Indians.’ Those people, who were referenced in law first primarily as ‘British and other Christians’ and then by mid-century as ‘English and freeborn,’ became, after 1680 ‘white’…. The Maryland law of 1681 reflects the first time in legal history, in the land that would eventually become the U.S., that ‘white’ was used in law to reflect a human classification. This Maryland law represents the invention of ‘white’ people in law… The law provides that freeborn English or ‘white’ women who enter into marriage with a slave of African descent do so ‘to the satisfaction of their lascivious and lustful desires’ and to the ‘disgrace not only of the English but also of many other Christian nations.’ This language reveals important perceptions and reflects persuasive efforts to shape a human group now being referred to as ‘white’. Taken-for-granted components include that African bodies represent excessive sexuality while bodies seen as ‘white’, like the English, reflect normal sexuality. The normality that is conferred by virtue of one’s status as English or white is corrupted and turned sexually deviant by the desire to wed those being constructed as ‘other’ and inferior – first enslaved African men, and then simply Africans. The corruption of the individual is then perceived to harm the group by disgracing the English collectively through challenging what being English symbolizes. The Maryland lawmakers here fuse biology with morality. Here, criminality is linked not to property damage or physical harm, but to an action that represents a threat to a group status. Here ‘white’ is revealed as fragile, requiring significant protective measures. The 1681 enactment of the Maryland lawmakers reveals the initial legal authorization of a label and its package of ideas that worked to create, perpetuate, and institutionalize representations of bodies made different, specifically those made ‘white’ and in the most general sense those rendered other-than-white. In addition, the law exposes these community standards to be premised upon a hierarchical ordering of humanity that presupposed the superiority of the English and then reveals the category ‘English’ being expanded to encompass ‘other whites’. We learn here, too, that whiteness was built upon the idea of English as white and upon the presumption of the English as Christian. We see also in these enactments that white is reflective of those who are deserving of freedoms and privileges denied those viewed as sufficiently unlike the English. These assumptions and ideas combine in the invention of the new category of humanity. For those who are now thinking that the invention of white people and the resulting racial hierarchy that follows is the fault of ‘the damn British’, I will caution that such a view of human categorization did not emerge from England and was viewed as peculiar by legal actors there. In England, access to rights and privileges were rooted in wealth, not shades of skin color. It was by British leadership WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA that ‘white’ people were imagined and invented.”
THUS IS THE BIRTH OF WHITE SUPREMACY AND WHITE PRIVILEGE IN AMERICA.
1682 – From 1607 to 1682, roughly 92,000 immigrants from Europe, mostly men from England, arrived in what is now called Virginia, but also Maryland. 69,000 were the victims of human traffickers who created a system known as chattel bond laborers. These English immigrants agreed to be enslaved as security against a loan or an inherited debt. The bond laborer was supplied with food, clothing and shelter during the years of service, and the master owned everything earned by the servant. The agreement looked like employment where the worker starts with a debt to repay only to find that repayment of the loan is impossible. Then, their enslavement becomes permanent. Under this system, some officers in the colony were getting rich under a system of private enterprise, advancing the fortunes of a few and the death of many. Most of this fortune was made in farming tobacco fields.
1690 - The 1690 “Act for the Better Ordering of Slaves” codified the institution of chattel slavery in South Carolina. Among other things, slaves were required to get written passes to travel. Those who lacked permission to travel were considered runaways. Barbaric punishments under the 1690 Act included whipping, branding, nose-slitting. Runaways were subject to being branded with an R on the cheek and/or loss of an ear. Other penalties for a range of offenses included castration and the severing of a tendon.
Section III of the 1690 Act contained the travel requirements is copied below:
1691 – Virginia passes an anti-miscegenation law. The law stated, “…. whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free, shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever….” Battalora writes, “The law did far more than control the sexuality and relationality of ‘white’ women and nonwhite men. It created a ‘criminal.’ Where a child was born, the law created an ‘abomination.’ Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law of 1691 begins by describing children born of a biological parent who was understood to be English or ‘white’ and a biological parent who was understood as a ‘negro, mulatto, or Indian as ‘that abominable mixture and spurious issue. Through this descriptive alchemy, the general assembly not only worked to create the human category ‘white’ but also a human category anathema to their colonial society. Virginia’s antimiscegenation law required not only that a free English woman who gave birth to a child fathered by a man from one of the prohibited classifications relinquish the child, but also that she pay a fine or face five additional years of servitude….The law blocked those relationships between ‘whites’ and those of native tribes or persons of African descent that took an intimate and consensual form from being legitimized by the community and from receiving the protections and exercising the responsibilities created by marriage law. In addition, these laws placed the financial burden, as well as the burden of public shame for ‘mixed’ pregnancies, upon women. ‘White’ men who had children with women understood as not ‘white’ did so largely to the advancement of their investment in property or that of the landowner for whom they labored…. Women of African descent were made capital and thus instruments of wealth production. ‘White’ women were made bearers of purity and thus instruments of white supremacy.”
1696 - The Royal African Trade Company loses its monopoly and New England colonists enter the slave trade.
1700 - Pennsylvania legalizes slavery.
1705 – Virginia enacts a law prohibiting setting free slaves of African descent. Another law imposed a prohibition against free blacks holding public office while yet another law prohibited the beating or whipping of a Christian ‘white’ servant while naked without an order from the justice of the peace. This law worked to render ‘white’ a special status deserving of protection from humiliation and physical punishment, linking ‘white’ with an expectation of due process while denying it to those outside its parameters. Other laws enacted blocked persons of African descent from testifying against a ‘white’ person and another that prohibited free blacks from possessing any weapon, including a club, gun, powder, or shot. Another law made it a criminal offense for a person of African descent to raise a hand against any ‘white’ person, subject to public lashing. Battalora writes, “These laws combined to render persons of African descent all but completely self-defenseless, especially against violence inflicted by a ‘white’ person. Not only do these laws enforce a human hierarchy that places ‘white’ people at the top, they render the lives of those of African descent less valuable than the most depraved and inhumane ‘white’ person. Through law, free people of African descent were stripped of the freedoms enjoyed in their status as ‘free’ members of the colonial society. No matter how loyal to the British crown, no matter how faithful to Christianity, no matter how valuable their contribution to the colonial community, people of African descent for the first time faced severe restrictions. They were limited not only in their legal standing within the community, but by virtue of their very ability to preserve and protect their bodily integrity and that of family members.” Meanwhile, a law was enacted that the freedom dues provided to every ‘white’ male included ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings in money, a gun, and to every woman servant, fifteen bushels of corn and forty shillings in money. Thus established the economic welfare system for white privilege.
1715 - Rhode Island legalizes slavery.
1723 – Virginia law excludes Africans from the armed militia. Battalora writes, “Through such enactments, those of African descent who were established as free members of the colonial community were rendered inferior to both an indentured and non-indentured ‘white’ man. An indentured ‘white’ man held the legal potential of a future position in public office and the ability to own any bond laborer. Through such laws, free people of African descent began to be stripped of the full range of opportunity and resources within colonial society. The messages promulgated by these laws and others include that the privileges of freedom are only fully available to ‘whites’ and that a person of African descent is incapable of being in a position of authority relative to a ‘white’ person.”
1739 - the Stono slave rebellion resulted in the imposition of an even stricter slave code, the “Bill for the better ordering and governing of Negroes and other Slaves in this Province,” known as the “Negro Act” of 1740. The Act of 1740 codified the denial of rights for slaves under English common law and deemed them legal nonentities. Slaves could not testify under oath, writing was prohibited, and drumming and playing horns was outlawed. The 1740 Negro Act made it illegal for slaves to move abroad, assemble in groups, raise food, earn money, and learn to read English. Owners are permitted to kill rebellious slaves if necessary. The 1740 Act even regulated clothing for slaves. The Act became the basis for the institution of slavery in South Carolina until 1865 and influenced slave codes throughout the South.
1775 - The African population in the colonies is nearly 500,000. In Virginia, the ratio of free colonists or ‘white’ men to slaves or non-white men is nearly 1:1. In South Carolina it is approximately 1:2.