One of the most vexing questions in African-American history is
whether free African Americans themselves owned slaves. The short answer
to this question, as you might suspect, is yes, of course; some free
black people in this country bought and sold other black people, and did
so at least since 1654, continuing to do so right through the Civil
War. For me, the really fascinating questions about black slave-owning
are how many black “masters” were involved, how many slaves did they own
and
why did they own slaves?
The answers to these questions are complex, and historians have been
arguing for some time over whether free blacks purchased family members
as slaves in order to protect them — motivated, on the one hand, by
benevolence and philanthropy, as historian Carter G. Woodson put it, or
whether, on the other hand, they purchased other black people “as an act
of exploitation,” primarily to exploit their free labor for profit,
just as white slave owners did. The evidence shows that, unfortunately,
both things are true. The great African-American historian, John Hope
Franklin,
states this clearly:
“The majority of Negro owners of slaves had some personal interest in
their property.” But, he admits, “There were instances, however, in
which free Negroes had a real economic interest in the institution of
slavery and held slaves in order to improve their economic status.”
In
a fascinating essay
reviewing this controversy, R. Halliburton shows that free black people
have owned slaves “in each of the thirteen original states and later in
every state that countenanced slavery,” at least since Anthony Johnson
and his wife Mary went to court in Virginia in 1654 to obtain the
services of their indentured servant, a black man, John Castor, for
life.
