Africans in America; 101; The Terrible Transformation; Interview with Frances Latimer, Historian

he's been in paris i was one on the eastern shore and my family goes back to and seventeen thirty eight on the eastern shore of maryland and virginia i'm first living in maryland when they came from africa movement to at my county and then at the end of the seventy two men just moving to the northampton county and we've been here since looking at it i started to love well and our house so we always heard about things that happened in the old days my mother thought i would start but the ultimate immigrant parents but i guess in

nineteen ninety one when my father was sick and we were my mom and my dad and i were closeted in a hospital room together we talk about what things and i was really i was really surprised that when i went to look for the things we talked about that i could find that anathema to the hospital and say innovation zones and psychology you and it and it was like a disease that had caught it and now i just i just realized at a lot like the old records like reading about things supporters claim what they might have been a star that

africans came to this this country to that this colony in nothing and encounters the eighth sire to the scaly arm early on in its settlement they were probably people they came from south america they were probably people on the floor who were slaves surely but not held in the same own confinement of slavery as came later their names were gps and they was francisco and they came and they lived i think that they encountered hostility i don't think it was the same kind of hostility the day he was going

on inside this is going to happen to really aren't and the first africans came to the eastern shore there was one county not to virginia it was the eighth share it was there were no there were very few houses if any they were they were rough and they entered a life of servitude and they lived that way there were some that were able to find their way free but for the most part the africans were in servitude as alarming as were the white people who came into the shore but the servitude was different african americans were servants for life and white people came into the show was servants for seven years to ten

years for unspecified amount of time so there was that major difference your views and king james there is to gain or to reassert talk about some high mountain pass we don't really know i don't know how anthony johnson gave his freedom but one man that we know how he gained his freedom was francis kane francis kane owners lived not enough denton county i'm thinking they lived in maryland but at but he gained his freedom by exchanging resides for his own life for his owns his own our freedom and they exchanged at and he went on the humanity he was freed matty live to

live the life of a free person but i have to say here that when you talk about a person being free hell freezes free what could they do mean annie johnson was the only black who owned property they bought africans bottom cheap and ten thousand i lived in a house that was probably on somebody else's land so i'm not not really sure what free really met for a preview the most influential people in two years to the

libyan women i think for anyone having having land at that time whether you're after ten or you were white was important we don't know how anthony johnson that that land we know that he had fifty acres of land for every person he imported into the colony but how he was put in the position or how he reached the position of being able to import those people into the calming we don't know um he was truly the only person the only african who lived in north hampton county who owned land most of the other africans that we know about that we can find records of owned only small things' their clothes cooking utensils they own and but a cow or sheep a cab and that said

we have record of several african zoning forces but surely either at anthony johnston was the only one who received a patent for a property i'm not sure about the of the procedures people that he knew the only record that i could find other person who was christie's this was richard bennett and richard bennett saw to it that he had a calf and you went to nathaniel own little thin and made arrangements for him to have a caf but that's the only connection i can find with an influential person at the beginning of his life later in his life he was friends with edmund stoiber can and cough but in the beginning that was the only richard bennett was the only purpose city lamb

and i'll touch here about what is said about anthony johnson play some historians have said that anthony johnson had a very close relationship with richard bennett and that he may have been a slave on his plantation on the western shore of virginia oh i don't know that i the only records that we can find of that arm is just one document we're richard bennett contacts daniel littleton and asked that he see to work that anthony johnson received a calf that's the only contact that we can see on the sure that he had with them that later on in his life when he moved to party we know that he was friends with their past scott berg in two years that the record is interesting because it does

this investigation mean the winds in and do this and and anthony johnson it was probably not unlike many africans who came to the colony at that time and not unlike many whites they came to the car to the colony at that time because i see i think that there was a nothingness i think that there were trees in an and water and they were there they had this in common they had in common that they had to survive in a wilderness and ends and when

johnson was an online most people who came into the colony in bondage white people claim as servants for certain amount of time but anthony johnson and other blocks came as servants the life it was a different because everybody was his tiny get them day to day there was just trying to live there was trying to eat they were trying to sleep if they had children they were trying to see to their children in the beginning and i think it was still active as it as it went on it was a lot of you know so it worked together in the ways that they use one another in order to improve themselves mean there is that harris is the pastor of getting land and you can claim people possibly use you know was a situation or

wrong or was it you know the stars in our eyes i think anthony johnson may have done his freedom by doing a good deed for somebody if indeed he knew richard bennett maybe he did something for richard bennett maybe saved a life i don't know but you know i'm fairly sure that he wasn't just given his freedom because he was loved ah other people other blacks got their freedom in different ways by saving money you know by having a little patch of land in and throwing something and selling it and saving them money with france's paint by by selling three servants to his master and his mistress and in exchange for his own freedom so there were ways and i'm sure that that when you're confronted with a situation when you're in that situation here

very creative about how you're going to get one you want and i think that those africans were very creative know i think that like it was hard but it was as easy as it was because they were created for because they knew how to move around and how to do it and i think that they learned that knowing that their lives depended on it and it seems that also in that time that it was the use of land to grow things to sell to to gain a small county pastor forced mccain's service himself in exchange the region is not quite dissenters in this novel there are in the genus time that makes it possible in these types of things in the chilling meaning in serious concert the

fbi at the time that at the johnson was a landowner and i'm tiny two to say again he was the only black landowner in the seventeenth century that lived in north hampton county which later became active at that time it wasn't easy to get your freedom but as the years went on biting six sixteen sixty sixteen seventeen laws started to started to come about virginia needed a work force and needed people to work so yet virginia one by one cut off the freedoms that he's like people have enjoyed and it by the end of the seventeenth century there was no freedom left those people who had gained their freedom before the passing of the laws are remained

free but they remained free at peril because now the landowners didn't just have to worry about slaves they had to worry about the influence that the free black people had on the enslaved black people so the free people were dead and peril of his support soon for aging city for eating forty or fifty well there is this these two reso where jobs are a pain to address your situation sliver went with was like then changes well we do while we're thinking wow we're we're

researching and we're finding the things that went on during the seventeenth century the beginning to the middle of the seventeenth century we are aware that all things were looking to smooth and people were fitting into certain places than knowing the images as early as sixteen thirty our records record that there was deception that they were people who will last who were brought to the church for their habits at lax with whites so we know that even on the surface were talking about how smoothly things had gone on or how well this group got along with that group or how well they fit into their little niches you know there were there were it was an anti tank from from the beginning on robert sweet who was one who was brought in from at the church for defiling himself by lying with a with a black

woman on this was only the beginning and this was as early as like this is sixteen thirty that's good anthony johnson no house caught fire and he lost according to our records everything arm i'm sure that that that created a hardship for hamed biko as there was nobody to know was nobody that was the tobacco market on the heat yet this fire and he lost everything and he his wife and his children went to court aman asked to be tax free because it was a burden having to pay taxes and they have this fire and the court said that anthony and mary johnson had been in the colony for thirty

years and that they were upstanding citizens and they made to marianne her daughter's tax free the only problem with that is that white women in the colony at that time were already tax free and the johnson family only reached that status by losing everything that they had so while it was a compliment to his good character that they would let him beat out let them be tax free it also shows us that and there wasn't the quality than ten suicide attacks that perhaps one reason congress were taxed at what does is when his wife susan were asking people losing

their attacks in virginia and oliver called all the shires and virginia people were taxed that worked and he feels he noticed our title it's our title is don't include white women they include numbers of slaves but not slaves name sometimes and they include people who worked and anthony johnson's wife and daughters were listed in the tidal ballistics workers and so they had to pay tax i don't know what the tax rate was or how much they paid he

says this is morning edition i think that when you have lived through adversity conditions and i don't just mean the fire but when you live through times of adversity i think that pulls people together anthony johnson and marry his two sons richard and john his daughters his name's we don't know came together because they were family they could depend on one another to decide what to do and that's the only way the system worked that was the only way he could farm that farm was that he could depend on those people and that's what he did at you know at the time of the fire

the play i think connie life for black and latino women was difficult i think that they were on the bottom rung of all the people that lived but i think that within the group of black and delilah women and that there were some lines that would just unbelievably cruel and severe and while other lives were wonderful lives they were better i think that mary johnson probably lived the best life of a black woman during that time she had she had a husband she had children she had that property and she was exempt from some

hardships didn't mean she didn't work hard she worked hard but then they were other roman pool as they had children their children were taken and if not sold given away some children were given as gifts other other woman who were even born free that didn't have the protection of a husband we're at the mercy of whoever they were at the mercy of a slave owners they were at the mercy of the mistress of the house they were just living harbaugh lives i think that the person that i think of when when i hear black woman and the seventeenth century the person that i think of and then i get my hair was sitting way up and i just felt so close to

her it felt like i could feel what she was feeling as you wanted to get married and couldn't know was denied marriage and then to have the slave owner of the men she wanted to marry say well you can't marry him but you can be with them if you give yourself to me for seventy years to live that seven years and think that at the end of that she's going to be free and he's going to be free and then to get there and to discover that none of it was true and to have to go on you know she could just walk away because now she had three children plus this man that she wanted to be worth an jane webb was probably one of the first women to use the court system one of the first black woman to use the court system over and over she went to court and

fought for her children trying to free them from thomas savage and then thomas savage dies and they're not free to know that he has left them to use tools and he's they were a part of as a state so a black woman's life doing the seventeenth century was just incredibly hard unit not just the work and the work at an art but it was emotionally heart the oh yeah you know that the court could take their cases to court is something that's kind of unusual time cobb as last week and anthony and americans use the courts where did to address what they think you are and fear that's against the uncritically around the issue will be the

slave talk about the support at the aerial support and and how things work during the beginning years of the young of the shore the settling of the shore the reason the court system was open to black people was that there was no specific law that denied access to the courts and so they were able to use the court system and they were able to pfeil says they were able to be a part of the court's history as a time when r and probably at sixty and sixty years ago started to be

shut down and so we got to the battle at the time we reached the end of slavery black people's only use of the court system was the ability to testify against another black or to testify for another black the that was that was their only use of the court's earlier there was nothing to stop them from using it all they needed to do was to have the knowledge that it was there and they used it and it isn't the term issues of court records and anthony just it's a label which one that makes it claimed my mind around this whole quest for miles around was so with that mean for him at like to lay claim to around record the north hampton county court records

in the order books in the north even in order book in north hampton county court records anthony the negro was distressed because he did not have his own property he did not know what to do some people feel that any new negro symphony johnson i'm not sure about that it appears to me that what this person wanted was a plot was a piece of ground not to itch and fifty acres and he wanted to know of now i know my known ground after this decision was made in court that he knew that it was his and he could work if he wanted to which is what he said and he knew when he could play when he wanted to and i'm not sure that that we first anthony johnson

it's possible that we can to try to a garden just at the same way as an actor he represents freedom that statement now i know mine and ground represents more than just that specific thing it represents a mindset that this is mine i know what i can do with it i don't have to do anything that i can do with it what i want to do every day once a week you know and i know that if i'm not working on the ground i consider my house i can play it was that it was freedom it talked about freedom and business has been this time went on more

african people were brought into the colony and when you look at it slavery and the condition of black people at that time you might think you know slavery was a cruel institution an end the people who thought of it works for it wasn't something that came about all at once you know it came about law by law it came about when there was that need to control those people that were present and as more africans came into the colonies more controls when it's necessary and so we can even tell from the first law that was passed the law that denied indians and blacks ammunition that that the slave owners and the plantation owners with me about safety you know they would be about cutting off they have the ability for the indian and the black to defend themselves

or to wreak havoc in in the company you know so as as more blacks came into the colony there was the need to control them and slavery grew out of that need not just for workforce but also for control and clara is that and we know is that the people in the room with us to clarify it was liza as libya restores and was that related to slaves law those and indians were laws that came about when the need arose for them to be controlled old i said that so badly unstuck

the there were wars i think that i think that

we think about slavery as this complete package inches came to evil landowners it touched for black people in their ears and didn't happen that way it happened one on a time one person at a time that the first laws that were first law that was passed was a lot of that that the night ammunition firepower to indians and locks and as they would need it as laws we needed as slave owners and as landowners felt the need to control a different behavior year after year they added more laws until finally sixteen ninety one they passed a law that made it illegal to free a black slave unless they were leaving the colony so by then it was pretty much

set that this was going to be a slave society but the laws that were passed new laws that that made slaves real estate which made it easier to buy and sell them to leave them in wells there were laws that said that if a child was born a slave mother the child was automatically a slave there were laws that said if a child was born of a white mother and a slave father their child then may follow the condition of the mother and be free but it would be indentured for certain amount of years so the laws just happened as they were needed we just move toward slavery won lot of time that was the conclusion for those who weren't who were enslaved were there looking at the situation

and they are recognizing the need to to create last clue to find out a lot by cell and this is that these people have to be realistic you know you need that that that a lot of this co worker on the system more efficient slavery slavery slavery my mind when i wrote slave codes didn't come about all at one time they came about one at a time if there was a runaway slave then we passed a law to make it illegal to run

away when there was the air of an insurrection we pass a law that made owning a gun illegal or denying the ability to own a gun when we just wanted to start being serious about slavery to laws made it really serious too early last minute serious one was the law that maybe the child subject to the condition of the mother that way if you had one woman slave if she bore a child every year china was a slave the other a lot that was very serious with a law that made slaves property that made them real estate that way you could transfer ownership with the deed by will usually the menu will you can transfer them to build sale they were legal property not unlike the car of today they were legally yours

the other lost the last law that was not the last law that was passed but the last law in the sixty eight hundreds that was just so important was the law that made it it legal to free a slave if the slave did not leave the colony and that meant there was no incentive no matter how wonderful the slave named and you and you know you were saying you were having this pang of conscience and he was saying i cannot own this dispersant you had to give the person up completely you can have a friend i mean they had to leave the colony and so there was there was no incentives until seventeen eighty two the first incentive to free a slave something you are millions and moving into the eighties and i was there for a license at justice children forces were in

a fundamentally change that by the time the end of the century came anthony johnston's children and grandchildren may well have been fighting to stay free because many slaves many free people were sold into slavery no they couldn't prove that they were free they've they had no way of letting anybody know that they were free so if a plantation owner came by and said this is my saliva now once allan he was sold so many people who had been freed whose parents have been three was sold into slavery so it was just a time of peril for four black for free black people it was a time of peril if you are a slave your life was pretty well set you knew that you were going to get up every morning with a couch any any

way up deciding what you're going to do with your own life and your whole life was subject to the will of somebody else so the slaves life was kind of i didn't relax life it was a life of carole williams for more reading this is it well i think that that could be the last piece the last piece of land owned that we know it's owned by the johnson family johnson song was called angola

and i'd like to believe that angola represented a memory if maybe not his memory the memory of his father angola in africa and i think that you know sometimes we like to think we we say that like people that africans had no memory of what happened to them before they came to this country i think that they were memories and i think that memories were passed down i think that there was a a concentrated effort for them to have no culture or memory but there were there were memories and they came out in little ways like that in and sometimes the naming their children african day names you know they came out and done i think that and color was just one example and the memory coming out they're the scenes at a certain point they just be some of the

security measures the us in the way that they govern if it is for children there wouldn't be a recount a free people you know after that i wonder about the freedom that the johnsons were able to maintain or after they moved from armed northampton aca my county and i said i have but sometimes that may be the reason that they moved was that they could see what was coming that they could see slavery happening and that they were moving north thinking that this was an easier place the north is an easier place maryland delaware we don't really know but maybe that was the thought that this

is a place with more freedom maybe virginia's laws are coming too fast or they're affecting them they were affecting them in ways that we don't even know and that was the reason that they moved when we're never gonna now but we do now that a free african living at the end of the seventeenth century lived a hard life he seems there is verification you is this is the size of those speculating try to figure out why i was with i think it's i enjoy i enjoy reading the records i enjoy knowing how other people lived and and maybe it's the dream or that makes you want to know you know a person who wants to live outside of themselves wants to know how somebody else leavitt when you

read the court records the sky's the limit for imagining how somebody else live it records that relate to like people are just so interesting data tell us the records of african people in the record books in that method northampton counties give us insight you know sometimes not in the specifics of the day to day lives but the records give us insight into what the person was about we see strengths and weaknesses you know we see young people who have been taken from their mother and we have to feel they're paying what would it be like if we lost her job we see african

people that have been brought to court for stealing food and we have to know what that was like to be hungry they were stealing large things that was doing something to eat so we see the strengths of people we see the weaknesses of people you know we see the whole human condition in our records we just need to treat we're the paint january sixteen thirty nine act was passed all persons accent negroes to be provided with got with arms and ammunition or be fined at pleasure of the governor and counsel this was the first law affecting africans and it was a law that denied them the rights of other people to own guns and ammunition

december sixteenth at sixty two at twelve was passed negro women children to serve according to the condition of the mother whereas some doubts have arisen where the children that by any english man upon and negro woman should be slave or free beer therefore impact it and be cleared by this present grand assembly that all children born in this country shall be held beyond or free only according to the condition of the mother this law tells us that its aim whatever the condition a mother is the child will fall with the mother is free and the child be free if the mother was a slave the child or slave the only

difference is that if the mother was free white was a white woman and the father was a negro slave than the child maybe born free but the child said to serve an indenture of up to thirty years with fb april sixteen nineteen sixteen april sixth april sixty ninety one act sixteen the act and act for suppressing outlined slaves in case any negroes mulatto his or other slave or slaves

lying out as a force that show resist runaway or refuse to deliver and surrender himself or themselves to any person or person that shall be my lawful authority employed to apprehend it shall be lawful for such person or person to kill and destroy such negroes mulatto those and other slave or slaves by gun or any other weiss what's so bad whatsoever that's where in a negro or mulatto slave or slaves shall be killed and pursuance to this act the owner or owners are certainly grow or east or mulatto slave shall be paid for such a negro or mulatto slave four thousand pounds of tobacco by the public the politics of this

it was passed in virginia to make sure that first of all slaves understood what the penalty was to run away to prevent them from running away but it also unsure the slave owner that he had a slave right away that they would be compensated that they would not lose so this was a law that sent a message to the slave and also to the slave owner ms thompson yes the pittsburgh another part of that six sixteen past april sixteen ninety one no negro or

mulatto b after the end of the prison section of assembly set free by any person or person whatsoever unless such person or persons they are his executors or administrator is pay for the transportation of some such negros or negroes out of the country within six months after such setting them free this along is the law that says that slavery is fine and says it not only slavery find an accepted by the colony but we're going to protect slavery and we're going to protect our investment by keeping that this law was the final blow that says that

once those instances where this conduit was losing long term gain those years they are several very good reasons to study slavery and to study the history of african americans one of the first reasons is that we have african american history month every year we really need that but we also need to feel that it isn't african american history only you know african americans and white people have never lived a life that was not dependent upon the other i mean it was not and even dependency but but there was nothing done in north hampton county or anathema county that that one race did you know not that grand houses that were built

you know not the dams that were done that the farms that were farmed we did it all together and end there needs to be a sense of american history you know and i had an awakening to the idea that we all work here you know we get different jobs but we all work here you know and we all build this and studying slavery well served to show what kinds of things each of us did not individually but what kinds of things groups did an event it is that it is the most important thing another part of studying slavery is the feeling among black people that somehow because we lived through this really awful time that we were responsible so we did something that made this happen to us and we need

to get rid of that we need not be ashamed of having survived the worst three hundred years in american history