In the 1780s and 1790s, the Virginia General Assembly passed laws that required free Black people to register with local officials and observe special curfews, barred free African Americans from testifying in cases involving whites, meted out harsher criminal penalties for Blacks than whites, and banned certain kinds of interactions between enslaved and free Black people. In 1793, Virginia became the first state to pass a law that banned free African Americans from migrating into the state.
