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Early Colonial Virginia Research Paper

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The legal status of blacks in early colonial Virginia is a hard issue to grasp and make sense of. It was not easy to determine the legal status of an individual of African descent in colonial Virginia because there were hardly any laws and regulations that were developed upon the arrival of the first group of blacks in 1619,through developing rules and regulation relating to slavery was how the legal status of people of African descent in colonial Virginia began to take place and into effect. It was when these rules and laws were already established was when Virginian colonists began to take notice of the blacks and how they were different, distinguishing them from the rest of the Virginians. In this paper the following issues will be discussed, how the first Africans came to Virginia, the legal status of blacks, how those laws came to be created, and the different type of methods that were used to distinguish blacks from the Virginians. The first Africans that were brought to colonial Virginia were the first of many generations to land in English North America. How did they first arrive? Examined by John Rolfe, it was in late August of 1619, that a …show more content…

As William Hening examined, it was no easy task when it came to determining what the legal position of a person of African descent in colonial Virginia is, here is why determining the legal status of blacks was difficult to understand. In early Virginia the legal status of blacks continued to be controversial since laws regulating slavery do not appear within the colony 's legal laws prior to the 1660s which is more then forty years after the arrival of the first African slaves in Virginia (pg.84 Freedom on my mind). This created a challenge when it came time to look back upon records and documents to see where blacks stood legally in early colonial Virginia. As mentioned in Freedom on my mind the enslaved Africans who arrived in

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