John Casor

Who is John Casor?

John Casor, a servant in Northampton County in the Virginia Colony, in 1655 became the first person of African descent in Britain's Thirteen Colonies to be declared as a slave for life as the result of a civil suit. In an earlier case, John Punch was the first man documented as a slave in the Virginia Colony, sentenced to life in servitude for attempting to escape his indenture.

In one of the earliest freedom suits, Casor argued that he was an indentured servant who had been forced by Johnson to serve past his term; he was freed and went to work for Robert Parker as an indentured servant. Johnson sued Parker for Casor's services. In ordering Casor returned to his master Anthony Johnson, a free black, for life, the court both declared Casor a slave and sustained the right of free blacks to own slaves.

Slavery law hardened during Casor's lifetime, making slavery a racial caste widely considered restricted to people of African descent. In 1662, the Virginia colony passed a law incorporating the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, ruling that children of enslaved mothers would be born into slavery, regardless of their father's race or status.