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By the 1700s, the laws and customs of Virginia had begun to distinguish black people from white people, making it impossible for most Virginians of African descent to do what Johnson and Key had done...According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first appearance in print of the adjective white in reference to “a white man, a person of a race distinguished by a light complexion” was in 1671. Colonial charters and other official documents written in the 1600s and early 1700s rarely refer to European colonists as white." (Bacon’s Rebellion: Inventing Black and White, 2016, para. 1 & 11)
"Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 was the last major uprising of enslaved blacks and white indentured servants in Colonial Virginia. One consequence of the failed rebellion was the intensification of African slavery and the social separation of blacks and whites in Virginia. The origins of Bacon’s Rebellion rested with the conquest of the Powhatan Indian Confederation (1644-1646) and the Confederation’s lands being distributed to the English planter class. Despite their defeat, Indians formally associated with the Confederation continued squatting on these lands which caused the Virginia colonists to engage in warfare against them." [Bacon's Rebellion (1676), Simba, 2022, Para. 1 - 2]
This quoted historical recount clearly reflect some bias. Of course, it should be noted that this was the Powhatan's land to begin with, and Bacon is no hero. "The Jamestown Colony of Virginia was founded in 1607, and tobacco began to be cultivated on large plantations in the east after tobacco seeds were brought to the region by John Rolfe (1585-1622) in 1610...Tobacco’s popularity abroad encouraged the establishment of more and more plantations, which encroached on Native American lands resulting in the Anglo-Powhatan Wars of 1610-1646. The First Powhatan War (1610-1614) had little to do with tobacco per se but did arise out of the land-grabbing policies of the colonists and the refusal of Jamestown’s governor, Thomas West, Lord De La Warr (l. 1577-1618) to compromise and address Native American concerns. Land was purchased for less than it was worth because the natives of the Powhatan Confederacy did not have the same concept of property rights as the English and so, to them, the transaction was more of a rental than a sale; the indigenous people believed they were only giving the English the right to use their land, not to own it...The first war was ended by the Peace of Pocahontas after Pocahontas (l. c. 1596-1617), daughter of the Powhatan chief Wahunsenacah (l. c. 1547-c. 1618), married John Rolfe. During this period of peace (1614-1622), more land was taken for tobacco cultivation and was worked by indentured servants. These were individuals who had agreed to work for seven years in return for passage to North America and, at the end of their servitude, to be rewarded with their own land. In 1619 CE, the first Africans arrived in Jamestown and were purchased by then-governor Sir George Yeardley (l. 1587-1627) to work his fields...Slavery had not yet been institutionalized in the colonies and had been outlawed in England centuries before...The Second Powhatan War broke out with the Indian massacre of 1622 in which over 300 colonists were killed by the Powhatan chief Opchanacanough (l. 1554-1646). When the war ended with an English victory in 1626, more land was taken from the Powhatans and turned into farmland and settlements. From 1614 onwards, every seven years, roughly, another group of indentured servants were released from their contract and received land and, while this was going on, more and more were arriving from England who had made the same arrangements and so even more land was required...After the Third Powhatan War (1644-1646), the Powhatan Confederation was dissolved, and large tracts of land taken by the colonists. The Native Americans were pushed into the interior but, as more colonists had been receiving land regularly since c. 1614, this area was also where former indentured servants were now settling on their promised acreage. Tribes formerly associated with the Powhatan Confederacy, as well as others, understood this land as theirs and periodically raided settlements, killing the colonists. During this same time, slavery was first introduced as a legal option for punishment in 1640 establishing a class of African slaves as the lowest and thereby elevating the status of indentured servants and other landless citizens, both black and white." (Bacon’s Rebellion - World History Encyclopedia, n.d., Para. 6-10)
Chief among the complaints leading to Bacon's Rebellion was land acquisition and voting rights. "Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) was the first full-scale armed insurrection in Colonial America pitting the landowner Nathaniel Bacon (l. 1647-1676) and his supporters of black and white indentured servants and African slaves against his cousin-by-marriage Governor William Berkeley (l. 1605-1677) and the wealthy plantation owners of East Virginia. The conflict began over the fair distribution of land rights and Bacon’s proposal to remove or eradicate the Native Americans who still lived in the region following the Anglo-Powhatan Wars (1610-1646). Bacon died of dysentery after burning Jamestown and the rebellion was crushed by Berkeley...The rebellion is significant in that it was the first to unite black and white indentured servants with black slaves against the colonial government, and, in response, the government established policies to ensure nothing like it would happen again. New legislation resulted in the dissolution of the indentured servant policy, an increase in the slave trade, the encouragement of the ideology of white supremacy, and further loss of land and rights for Native Americans. The aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion, in fact, can be understood as establishing institutionalized, systemic racism in the English colonies which would become the United States of America." (Bacon’s Rebellion - World History Encyclopedia, n.d., Para. 1-3)
"When voting began in the colonial period with elections to the first General Assembly in 1619 [in Virginia], adult white men who were not working as an indentured servant could vote. That was a limited pool of voters, but it included more than those who owned land. As servants conpleted [sic] their term of indenture, they received their 'freedom dues' (some clothing and food) and gained the right to move to a new place, negotiate the price for their labor, and accumulted [sic] enough assets or credit to purchase land. Former servants also acquired the right to vote for burgesses to serve in the General Assembly and for the initial members of the vestry when a Church of England parish was created by the General Assembly. Cultural pressure rather than defined property requirements may have limited who chose to vote until 1646, when the General Assembly passed a law making it clear that every free white adult male had the right to vote. Starting in the 1630's, a few families began to establish large landholdings and become the dominant political force in different counties. The large numbers of indentured servants who gained their freedom struggled to grow enough tobacco to acquire parcels of land. England shipped convicts to provide labor and empty the jails, and those who survived their term of service also became free men...During the English Civil War in 1655, when Governor Berkeley had been deposed and the General Assembly was electing governors, the colonial legislature passed a law restricting the right to vote to those who were 'householders.' As more women immigrated into the colony and the gender ratios became more balanced, families living in separate structures became a more significant percentage of the population. The law limited the franchise. Former indentured servants living in someone else's house lost the right to vote; only the householder himself could participate in elections. That restriction of the electorate lasted only one year. In 1656, the General Assembly again authorized all freemen to vote. In 1670, Governor William Berkeley got the colonial legislature to restrict the right to vote to white males who owned enough property to pay local taxes. Farmers with a lease for land that was extended out enough years to require paying property taxes also qualified...The 1670 requirement that a man must own enough property to pay local taxes was a mass disfranchisement; the right to vote was withdrawn from a major percentage of the male population. Governor Berkeley had not dissolved the General Assembly since the 1661 election. There were few elections in the 1660's, and the new restriction had limited impact initially. The new limits on voting were applied first in elections after an elected burgess died or resigned...Governor Berkeley was a royalist with a strong personal desire to increase his own wealth and status. He was conscious of being in the upper class and was not motivated by republican principles. His priorities were to maintain a stable society that steered wealth to an elite few, rather than the principles in the American Revolution to broaden the democratic process and provide more-equal opportunity. Gov. Berkeley's restrictions on the electorate in 1670 blocked the ability of poor farmers to elect burgesses who might oppose Berkeley's initiatives, and the only avenue left for the poor farmers to 'change the system' was violence. It took only six year for that to occur." (footnotes removed) (Property Requirements for Voting in Virginia, 1670-1850, n.d., Para. 1-4, 5-7, 9, & 13)
"The military and political situation was made more complication by the presence of African slaves who along with indentured servants produced the colony’s main crop, tobacco. Planters looked down upon the slaves, indentured servants, and landless freemen both White and Black whom they called the 'giddy multitude.' The two main antagonists during the rebellion, Virginia Colonial Governor William Berkeley and landowner Nathaniel Bacon who was related by marriage, were both purchasers of former Powhatan land near Jamestown. During the decades of the 1650s and 1660s a sizable number of indentured servants, Black and white, who had completed their required indentured labor service, clamored for old Powhatan land as well which was under the control of Berkeley and his planter class associates. Despite his elite status, Bacon joined and led these former servants in attacking peaceful Indians to acquire their lands. Berkeley, however, fearing an outbreak war between whites and Indians on the frontier, jailed Bacon for a few months, because of these attacks. Once released, Bacon declared himself the leader of the colony’s former indentured servants, freemen, black and white, newly arrived landless immigrants from England, Scotland, or Ireland, and enslaved blacks, all of whom bonded together because of their common exploitation on the large tobacco estates. Understanding that the promotion of their grievances served his own interests for power and additional land, Bacon marched on Jamestown, the colonial capital, with 500 men and confronted Governor Berkeley who escaped. Bacon then issued his 'Declaration of the People' on July 30, 1676. In this document, he accused Governor Berkeley of corruption and of being pro-Native American." (Bacon's Rebellion (1676), Simba, 2022, Para. 3 - 6)
"Before the Indian raids, landowner Nathaniel Bacon was an ally of Governor Berkeley. Bacon had moved to Virginia in 1674 and bought the Curles Neck Plantation, a tobacco plantation, in Henrico County. Bacon had a reputation for being well-spoken and smart, but he was also known as a troublemaker. Despite his shortcomings, Bacon was also related to Berkeley by marriage and the Governor appointed him to the Virginia Council of State — the Governor’s Council — on March 3, 1765...In one of the raids, the Indians attacked one of Bacon’s properties, known as Bacon’s Quarter, and one of his employees was killed. As a result, Bacon turned on Berkeley and joined in with the others in demanding the Governor take military action against the Indians...Bacon offered to lead the expedition against the tribes, but Berkely refused. To avoid hostilities, Berkeley proposed Virginia build a series of forts to help protect against the Indian raids, which the assembly agreed to. Trade with the Indians was also temporarily suspended...When Berkeley failed to satisfy the demands of the colonists, they formed their own militia force of volunteers from the area of Charles City and Henrico County. Bacon was elected to lead the force and he led it in pursuit of the Susquehannock. Bacon’s forces, which numbered about 200, included a significant number of enslaved African Americans and white indentured servants...Along the way, he convinced another tribe, the Occaneechi, to help him. He had them launch an attack on the Susquehannock, which was successful. However, when the Occaneechi returned, Bacon turned on them. He attacked their town and killed men, women, and children. Berkeley was outraged by Bacon’s treachery against the Occaneechi, and in May, he declared that Bacon was in rebellion. He removed him from the Governor’s Council and called for an election for the House of Burgesses. Berkeley wanted the new assembly to meet on June 5 [1676]. The residents of Henrico Country elected Bacon as their representative to the new session of the House of Burgesses. Bacon and his men set out for Jamestown and arrived on June 6. When Bacon tried to take his seat, he was captured, and he surrendered. He apologized to Berkeley for his actions, and the Governor restored him to his seat on the Governor’s Council. However, there was another disagreement over the relationship with the Indians and Berkeley removed him from the council again...On July 30, Bacon issued a “Declaration of the People of Virginia.” He accused Berkeley of being corrupt and provided details on how the Governor had benefited from the actions he had taken. However, Bacon conveniently failed to point out how he had also gained from the same policies...Bacon sent ships out along the coast to find Berkeley, and he took his army and went looking for the Pamunkey Indians. Bacon and his men searched for several weeks and finally found them in the early part of September. Bacon attacked the tribe. Some were killed, many were captured, and the rest fled. Bacon and his men started their march back to Jamestown...Berkeley arrived on September 8 and took control of the city without any hostilities. Bacon arrived on September 14 and laid siege to Jamestown. On September 18, Berkeley abandoned Jamestown and retreated. Bacon knew he could not retain control of the city, and he could not allow Berkeley to have it either. Bacon ordered his men to 'laye itt [sic] level with the Ground.' On September 19, Bacon’s men went through the town and set fire to the buildings." (Bacon’s Rebellion, Summary, Facts, Significance, n.d.)
"At the start the governor branded Bacon a rebel, but he was soon forced by public pressure to give Bacon a commission. Later Berkeley again denounced Bacon’s activities as rebellious and launched several military expeditions against Bacon and the 60 or so colonists who had followed him in retaliatory raids on the Native Americans. Bacon managed to seize control of the government for a time and called a reform assembly to repeal low tobacco price scales and high taxes. At the height of his power in late 1676, however, Bacon died of fever, and the rebellion collapsed soon afterward. Because he exploited the colonial grievances that stemmed in part from the arbitrary, self-perpetuating, and privilege-seeking nature of Berkeley’s government, Bacon sometimes has been pictured by some historians as a democratic reformer and forerunner of the American Revolution." (Nathaniel Bacon | Biography, Rebellion, & Facts | Britannica, 2025)
Berkeley was also no hero, and his reasons for wanting to preserve relationships with Native American tribes and restrict voting was not only fueled by a sense of justice but also of money and power, not unlike what we see in modern society. "Governor Berkeley chose to restrict the franchise when the frustrations of the poor white males were growing. High taxes approved by the General Assembly after 1660 were perceived as being wasted. Those taxes subsidized the already-wealthy gentry that the governor appointed to various offices. The appointees gained an additional salary for each office and the governor gained political support in the House of Burgesses and his Council from the emerging 'First Families of Virginia,' but the taxpayers saw no benefits...Instead of forcing Native American groups to leave their land so new farmers could occupy it, the governor negotiated deals with Native Americans for trading furs. Settlers sensed that frontier security was secondary to keeping the peace despite raids by Native Americans, so the governor could get even richer from the fur trade...Bacon's Rebellion ended soon after Nathaniel Bacon died from disease. Troops from England arrived, Governor Berkeley was recalled, and commisioners [sic] sent by King Charles II restored order.
The king sent instructions to void many of the laws passed by the 1676 meeting of the General Assembly, which had been pressured by Bacon's rebels to rebalance opportunities to gain and retain wealth across class lines. One law passed by those burgesses had eliminated the minimum property requirement for voting. However, King Charles II specifically directed that a property requirement be adopted for future elections to the House of Burgesses. It took eight years for the General Assembly to formally comply. In 1684, it finally passed a law to restrict the franchise as directed by the king. The threshold of minimum property required to vote was altered, but not eliminated, for another 175 years after Bacon's Rebellon. The discrimination against the poor continued even after the American Revolution." (Property Requirements for Voting in Virginia, 1670-1850, n.d.) (footnotes omitted)
Both Berkely and Bacon "promised freedom to slaves and servants who would join their cause. But Bacon's following was much greater than Berkeley's. ...Bacon's Rebellion demonstrated that poor whites and poor blacks could be united in a cause. This was a great fear of the ruling class -- what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight them? This fear hastened the transition to racial slavery." (Africans in America/Part 1/Bacon’s Rebellion, n.d.) "Virginia’s wealthy planters were shaken by the fact that a rebel militia that united white and black servants and slaves had destroyed the colonial capital. Legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes: 'The events in Jamestown were alarming to the planter elite, who were deeply fearful of the multiracial alliance of [indentured servants] and slaves. Word of Bacon’s Rebellion spread far and wide, and several more uprisings of a similar type followed. In an effort to protect their superior status and economic position, the planters shifted their strategy for maintaining dominance. They abandoned their heavy reliance on indentured servants in favor of the importation of more black slaves.' After Bacon’s Rebellion, Virginia’s lawmakers began to make legal distinctions between 'white' and 'black' inhabitants. By permanently enslaving Virginians of African descent and giving poor white indentured servants and farmers some new rights and status, they hoped to separate the two groups and make it less likely that they would unite again in rebellion. Historian Ira Berlin explains: 'Soon after Bacon's Rebellion they increasingly distinguish between people of African descent and people of European descent. They enact laws which say that people of African descent are hereditary slaves. And they increasingly give some power to independent white farmers and land holders . . .Now what is interesting about this is that we normally say that slavery and freedom are opposite things—that they are diametrically opposed. But what we see here in Virginia in the late 17th century, around Bacon's Rebellion, is that freedom and slavery are created at the same moment.'...As the status of people of African descent in the British colonies was challenged and attacked, and as white indentured servants were given new rights and status, the word white continued to be more widely used in public documents and private papers to describe the European colonists. People of European descent were considered white, and those of African descent were labeled black. Historian Robin D. G. Kelley explains: 'Many of the European-descended poor whites began to identify themselves, if not directly with the rich whites, certainly with being white. And here you get the emergence of this idea of a white race as a way to distinguish themselves from those dark-skinned people who they associate with perpetual slavery.' " (Bacon’s Rebellion: Inventing Black and White, 2016)
"Stricter slave codes emerged in Virginia after Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, when wealthy planters decided to abolish indentured servitude and establish permanent slavery for Africans, fearing that class conflict would undermine their tobacco plantation holdings. They gradually eliminated the importation of indentured servants from England in favor of enslaved Africans. Though many of Virginia’s slave codes addressed specific conflicts-one law enacted in 1701 offered a bounty for killing a runaway named Billy, who was alleged to have robbed and destroyed crops-most were designed to aggressively curb the movements and activities of slaves. Social and cultural separation of blacks and whites was started when Virginia planters began establishing laws based on the assumption that Africans were an inferior race.
- Black slaves were prohibited from carrying firearms by a 1639 Virginia law, which prescribed 20 lashes for violations of the statute. There was one exception: with his master’s permission, a slave could bear firearms to defend against Indian raids.
- Massachusetts became the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641.
- In 1650, Connecticut legalized slavery.
- The Barbados slave code was set up by the English in order to provide a legal base for slavery in the Caribbean island [sic]. Under its provisions, slave owners were required to provide clothing for their slaves; but the slaves were denied even the basic rights guaranteed by English common law. Slave owners were allowed to do anything they wanted to their slaves, which in practice included mutilating them and even burning them alive. South Carolina adopted the code in 1696, and it formed the legal basis of slave law in many English colonies in North America.
- Slavery was legally recognized in Virginia with the passage of a 1661 fugitive slave law. The punishment of adding time to a period of service, which was commonly used for indentured servants, was not useful because the servitude of slaves was permanent. The statute did decree, however, that if a white servant ran off with a slave, he would have to serve his penalty term plus that of the slave.
- A 1662 law decreed that the children of slaves took on the status of their mother, in contrast to common law, which conferred the father’s status on a child. The law was intended to enslave the increasing number of children fathered by white men.
- Maryland legalized slavery in 1663 and attempted to pass a law that would enslave free blacks and require that all blacks be slaves regardless of their mother’s status; in the following year, Maryland punished marriage between a white woman and a slave by requiring that she serve her husband’s master during her husband’s lifetime and that their children would be slaves.
- In 1664, slavery was legalized in New York and New Jersey.
- In 1667 Virginia even enacted a law that decreed that baptism would not change the status of the converted, meaning that becoming Christian would not free a slave.
- A 1676 law prohibited free blacks from having white servants. To limit the increase in free black manumissions, special measures were enacted in 1691.
- A 1681 Maryland law reversed an earlier statute and reestablished that children born to free black women and black children born to white women would be free.
- Virginia passed two acts in 1682 that combined Native Americans and Africans into one category as 'negroes and other slaves.'
- In 1699, slave laws stipulating whippings and other forms of corporeal punishment as the standard practice for dealing with slaves were the rule in Virginia. In some cases, the laws were quite specific, such as the statute that punished pig stealing by nailing the thief’s severed ears to a pillory post. Other laws stated the penalty for burning barns and crops; when slaves could testify in court; what compensation slaveholders could expect from the colonial government when one of their slaves was executed for a crime; and what punishments were to be dealt to slaves who were convicted of insulting whites. There were a number of laws that covered the handling of runaway slaves. As early as 1630, laws regulating relations between whites and blacks appeared on the statute books, including such penalties as a whipping before an assembly of slaves for a white man who had sex with a black woman. After 1690s, even stricter laws against miscegenation appeared, when marriages between whites and blacks became illegal, and whites could be expelled from the colony as punishment.
- In 1705, Virginia law began to define more clearly the status of slaves as property. Slaves could be used both as collateral for borrowing money and as assets in the payment of debts. Creditors, in fact, had first claim on slaves in settlement of debts; even slaves who had been freed could be re-enslaved if necessary to settle their former master’s debts. In addition, one third of her deceased husband’s slaves, including those who had been promised their freedom, could be claimed by the widow of a slaveholding husband.
- Pennsylvania banned the importation of slaves in 1712. That same year New York prohibited blacks from owning property."
(Colonial Authority (1600-1775), Artz, 1600)
While all of this history is harrowing and terrible to think about, remember that by 2025- despite the attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that we face in all forms- we are freed United States Citizens, "African-Americans", and we can and do vote in large numbers. Our ancestors stood against extremism and won- and we are proof of that. The question in the 2025 #VRABlackHistory #WeWillToo Series, is how did they succeed and how can we as well. Class division and oligarchies are not new- they are as old as America's history. When we rise together- we will face opposition- but that does not mean we cannot win, even when everyone seems to be against us.
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