African-American Slave Owners

African American slave owners within the history of the United States existed in some cities and others as plantation owners in the country. During this time, ownership of slaves signified both wealth and increased social status.

The original practice precedes the timeline of slavery in the United States; inhabitants of the African and Middle Eastern continent practiced various forms of slavery since Late Antiquity. Accordingly, black slave owners were relatively uncommon, however, as "of the two and a half million African Americans living in the United States in 1850, the vast majority ereenslaved." This event remains a controversial topic among proponents of Afrocentrism.

History

Slave owners included a comparatively small number of people of at least partial African ancestry, in each of the original thirteen colonies and later states and territories that allowed slavery; in some early cases black Americans also had white indentured servants. It has been widely claimed, that an African former indentured servant who settled in Virginia in 1621, Anthony Johnson, became one of the earliest documented slave owners in the mainland American colonies when he won a civil suit for ownership of John Casor. In 1830, there were 3,775 black (including mixed-race) slaveholders in the South who owned a total of 12,760 slaves, which was a small percentage of a total of over two million slaves then held in the South. 80% of the black slaveholders were located in Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. However, The first “documented slave for life,” John Punch, lived in Virginia but was held by Hugh Gwyn, a white man, not Anthony Johnson.

There were economic and ethnic differences between free blacks of the Upper South and the Deep South, with the latter fewer in number, but wealthier and typically of mixed race. Half of the black slaveholders lived in cities rather than the countryside, with most living in New Orleans and Charleston. In particular, New Orleans had a large, relatively wealthy free black population (''gens de couleur'') composed of people of mixed race, who had become a third social class between whites and enslaved blacks, under French and Spanish colonial rule. Relatively few non-white slaveholders were substantial planters; of those who were, most were of mixed race, often endowed by white fathers with some property and social capital. For example, Andrew Durnford of New Orleans was listed as owning 77 slaves. According to Rachel Kranz: "Durnford was known as a stern master who worked his slaves hard and punished them often in his efforts to make his Louisiana sugar plantation a success." In the years leading up to the Civil War, Antoine Dubuclet, who owned over a hundred slaves, was considered the wealthiest black slaveholder in Louisiana.

The historians John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger wrote:

The historian Ira Berlin wrote:

African-American history and culture scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote:

Free blacks were perceived "as a continual symbolic threat to slaveholders, challenging the idea that 'black' and 'slave' were synonymous". Free blacks were sometimes seen as potential allies of fugitive slaves and "slaveholders bore witness to their fear and loathing of free blacks in no uncertain terms". For free blacks, who had only a precarious hold on freedom, "slave ownership was not simply an economic convenience but indispensable evidence of the free blacks' determination to break with their slave past and their silent acceptanceif not approvalof slavery."

The historian James Oakes, in 1982, stated that:

In his 1985 statewide study of black slaveholders in South Carolina, Larry Koger challenged this benevolent view. He found that the majority of mixed-race or black slaveholders appeared to hold at least some of their slaves for commercial reasons. For instance, he noted that in 1850 more than 80% of black slaveholders were of mixed race, but nearly 90% of their slaves were classified as black. Koger also noted that many South Carolina free blacks operated small businesses as skilled artisans, and many owned slaves working in those businesses. "Koger emphasizes that it was all too common for freed slaves to become slaveholders themselves."

Some free black slaveholders in New Orleans offered to fight for Confederate Louisiana in the Civil War. Over 1,000 free black people volunteered and formed the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, which was disbanded without ever seeing combat.

References

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Pre-emancipation African-American history
American slave owners
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