Click Here for Issues & Views: Freed In the 17th Century

"From the earliest days of American slavery, men and women were set free for numerous reasons. Sometimes an owner died and the heirs did not want slaves, or a slave was freed as reward for his good service, or he worked his way out of slavery by paying for his freedom. The following data is from Paul Heinegg’s book, Free African Americans of North Carolina and Virginia, a collection of genealogies of black families who lived in the 17th through 19th centuries. Heinegg shows how the social status of many landowning black families changed so much over the years that 'by the 20th century they had no idea their ancestors had been free.'"