60 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and EnslavementNegroes, he and his family were technically aliens. Th ere-
fore, they had no rights to land ownership in the colony.
Th e court confi scated all lands previously owned by the
Johnson family on behalf of the Crown.
See also: Chesapeake Colonies; Freedom Dues; Indentured
Servitude; Jamestown, Virginia; TobaccoJane M. AldrichBibliography
Berlin, Ira. Many Th ousands Gone: Th e First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University, 1998.
Breen, T. H., and Stephen Innes. “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and
Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1 640– 1 676. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980.
Wright, Donald R. African Americans in the Colonial Era: From
African Origins through the American Revolution. 2nd ed.
Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2000.Kingdom of Asante
Of the many Akan-speaking states in the Gold Coast re-
gion of West Africa emerged a powerful and centralized
kingdom known as Asante. Before the rise of Asante, two
sizable Akan states—Denkyira and Akwamu—competed
for power and access to lucrative trade routes during the
early 17th century. Indeed Denkyira, which had a number
of smaller tributary states within its dominion, practically
monopolized the gold and kola trade in the Pra-Ofi n river
basin. By the 1670s, Osei Tutu, a member of the Oyoko clan
and a vassal in the court of Denkyira who rose in the ranks
to become a general in the Denkyira military, established
control over a trading center named Kumasi. In defecting
from Denkyira, Osei Tutu began to group local clan leaders
and regional kings of tributary states under the collective
domination of Denkyira into loose military and political
alliance.
In 1695, this loose alliance of clans and city-states was
formally brought together into a military pact with the
intent to overthrow the Denkyirahene—the king of Den-
kyira. With his close adviser and friend, Okomfo Anokye,
Osei Tutu gathered together local rulers to witness a mir-
acle that catapulted him to the role of king of a new and
powerful nation. According to legend, Okomfo Anokye,
declaring that he was on a mission from the Akan supremepersonal approval of the Bennett family as they became his
benefactor. Under their sponsorship, Antonio was allowed
to farm some acreage independently while still enslaved.
He and Mary were able to work their way out of indentured
servitude by purchasing the balance of their contract. To-
gether they had children, whom they had baptized. Once
freed, Antonio anglicized his name to Anthony Johnson.
By 1650, the man now known as Anthony Johnson had
acquired not only his freedom, but also a 250-acre estate,
where he probably grew tobacco and corn while tending a
herd of cattle. Further, his son John received a patent for 550
acres and Anthony’s son Richard owned a 100-acre estate.
Johnson and his sons were clearly men of substance in early
Virginia and, along with holding property and farming in-
dependently, they were slaveholders who accumulated siz-
able estates for their heirs. Indeed, Anthony Johnson may
have held contracts on indentured servants of both African
and European origin. Th e Johnson family, and other free
black families of early Virginia, enjoyed the same rights as
their white counterparts in their community and could em-
ploy the law to protect themselves and their interests.
Th e experience of Anthony Johnson and his family il-
lustrates the fl uidity of the community for Africans in mid-
17th-century Virginia as well as somewhat of a balance of
power and rights between races—albeit racial discrimina-
tion did exist—that would not survive much beyond John-
son’s lifetime. In 1653 the Johnson family suff ered a heavy
fi nancial loss due to fi re and successfully petitioned the
court for relief on their tax debt. Next, in 1655, Johnson
sought legal action against a white man, Robert Parker,
for detaining a slave owned by Johnson. Again, Johnson
sought legal action and successfully regained custody of
John Casor, a black man who was now legally determined
to be Johnson’s slave.
By the early 1660s, as racial tensions grew in Virginia,
slave laws began to clearly state that indentured servitude
was an appropriate form of service only for individuals
arriving from Christian homelands, or Europeans. Indi-
viduals brought to the colony from Africa, a non-Christian
region, would be subject to a lifetime of enslavement. John-
son and his family, concerned by the tightening of the race
laws within their community and the increasing racial dis-
crimination they experienced, moved to the Somerset area
of Maryland where they once again prospered.
Anthony Johnson died in Somerset, Maryland, in 1670.
Th at same year, courts back in Virginia determined that, as