Yellow Crocus (Freedman/Johnson, #1)

by Laila Ibrahim

All indentured servants, both European and African, agreed to work off their debt for seven to fifteen years. After that, they were to be released and given five acres of land each, a bushel of seed, and the freedom to pursue their own fortunes in the New World. Quickly the landed gentry realized that their plantations would not be profitable if they paid their workforce. Thus Mattie’s African ancestors were not turned free or given the means to farm for themselves, but held in perpetual bondage after the Virginia Assembly passed a law in 1705 clarifying once and for all the status of Africans in the colony.

In addition, social status for slaves transferred from mother to child rather than from father to child, so regardless of your father’s status, you would be a slave if your mother was enslaved. Those changes in social codes ensured eighteenth-century planters of Virginia a steady supply of workers.