Selected Virginia Statutes relating to Slavery


The following selections indicate that Africans and their descendants received unequal treatment in the years before the General Assembly decided that children of enslaved women would be slaves for life. The documents also reveal that relations between English and Africans had a degree of fluidity during the seventeenth century as Virginia developed into a society where race, instead of status, determined one's place in the social hierarchy.



©Crandall Shifflett
All Rights Reserved
1998