Images buzzing on social media show a photo of a black man mistakenly identified as Anthony Johnson and described as the first slaveholder in the United States. However, the photo is incorrectly marked. It’s from formerly addicted Lewis Hayden, who helped dozens of people out of slavery in the 1800s. A particularly popular version of the picture, which has been shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook, presents the photo attached to a drawing of a man mistakenly ‘first slave! ‘The drawing is a sketch by the German artist Albrecht Durier from the Renaissance era.
The owner of the black plantation, Anthony Johnson, did file an important lawsuit in 1653, which helped establish the practice of slavery in the American colonies, but claimed that he had established slavery or was the first person to be black. people enslaved in the country is misleading.
Examples of the post here, here Here is everything a photographic portrait of Johnson, who first came to Virginia as a prisoner in Africa in 1621 and died in 1670. A common label is ‘The Founding Father of American Slavery’ and ‘First slave owner!’
It would be impossible for Johnson to be in any photo since Louis Daguerre invented photography in the 1800s. The “earliest existing American portrait photograph”, taken in 1839, is of a white man, as seen here in the Library of Congress and PBS says here “no known portraits of Johnson exist”.
The photo is of Lewis Hayden, as seen here and here. Hayden escaped slavery in Kentucky and then ‘protected and assisted’ ‘many accused of freedom seekers’ with his wife in their ‘leading safe house underground railway’ in the 1800s. He also recruited black soldiers to fight in the Civil War and is believed to be the first African-American employee of the Massachusetts Commonwealth.
Oddly enough, the sketch that was described as “the first slave” was used in the past to also represent Anthony Johnson (here). The subject of the drawing, as seen here, is not identified. But the model was probably not a slave of colonial America, as the Renaissance artist of the sketch died in 1528, decades before England established permanent colonies in North America (www.albrecht-durer.org/ here).
American slavery was institutionalized over many years and was largely recognized as legal in colonies more than a century before the signing of the Constitution. So there are few single “firsts” that can be easily identified. The first ‘documented slave for life’, John Punch, lived in Virginia but was held by Hugh Gwyn, a white man, not Anthony Johnson. In 1640, Punch was caught trying to escape his complicated servitude in Virginia and then sentenced by a court to serve his ‘master’ Gwyn for the ‘time of his natural life’ (here, here). Meanwhile, the colony of Virginia first recognized slavery in its statutory law in 1662 (here).
A lawsuit filed by Anthony Johnson, who bought him out of slavery in 1653 to become a plantation owner (here), was an important step in the legal recognition of slavery in the colonies, but it was not a foundation of slavery. and did not label Johnson as the first slave owner. Johnson sued his former servant John Casor for returning to his household. When the court ruled that Casor would be his servant for life, it set a legal precedent for what was known as slavery in Virginia, such as William J. Wood in a January 1970 issue of the American Bar Association Journal (here). explained.
VERDICT
Untrue. Photographs of a black man identified as Anthony Johnson and described as a slave owner are actually of Lewis Hayden, who sheltered escaped slaves and worked to end American slavery in the 1800s.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.