Slavery was officially established in Virginia in 1654, when Anthony Johnson, a black man, convinced a court that his servant (also black) John Casor was his for life. Johnson himself had been brought to Virginia some years earlier as an indentured servant (a person who must work to repay a debt, or on contract for so many years in exchange for food and shelter) but he saved enough money to buy out the remainder of his contract and that of his wife. The court ruled in Johnson’s favor, and the very first officially state-recognized slave existed in Virginia. Johnson eventually became very wealthy and began importing his own black slaves from Africa.
Sustaining the claim of Anthony Johnson to the perpetual service of John Casor the court gave judicial sanction to the right of Negroes to own slaves of their own race. Indeed no earlier record, to our knowledge, has been found of judicial support given to slavery in Virginia except as a punishment for crime. The defendant, John Casor, thus became the first individual known to be declared a slave in what later became the United States. [3]
In 1665 Anthony Johnson and his wife Mary, his son John and his wife Susanna, and their slave John Casor moved to Somerset County, Maryland. Casor remained Johnson's slave for the rest of his life