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Although she was born into slavery in 1849, Amanda enjoyed a more privileged childhood than other black girls. 7 Antoine DubucletĪmanda America Dickson was a biracial woman who became one of the wealthiest African-American women in 19th-century America. Highly respected for his professionalism, he built an excellent reputation as a black man sharing the same social status as whites. He legally obtained his freedom in 1817 and moved to Sumter County, South Carolina, where he ran a successful gin shop.Įllison owned a 900-acre cotton plantation, $58,000 worth of estate, and 37 slaves (according to an 1850 census). He continued to work in McCreight’s gin shop until age 26, at which point he had been equipped with all the skills necessary to become a successful independent professional. During his apprenticeship, Ellison learned to read, write, cipher, and do bookkeeping and also trained as a carpenter, machinist, and blacksmith. became an apprentice under William McCreight, a gin builder from whom he learned to build and repair cotton gins. was born in 1790 as April Ellison because it was customary back then to name children of slaves for the month in which they were born.Īround age 12, Ellison Jr. was the son of black slaves owned by a white planter named William Ellison. Unfortunately, this set a precedent that paved the way for the proliferation of legalized slavery. This was the first case in which a servant was sentenced to permanent servitude without having committed a crime.

But after a court ruled his tenure as permanent, Johnson legally became the first slave owner. John Casor, a black servant working for Johnson, eventually sought to be released from his servitude. Johnson became one of the first property owners of African descent in the 13 colonies and bought the contracted labor of five indentured servants, four of whom were white. Then he purchased 250 acres of land and ran his own successful tobacco farm. He worked on a tobacco farm until he gained his freedom. Like other immigrants at this time, Johnson worked as a contract laborer with the promise of a land grant from the colony upon completion of his tenure. Cuffee died in 1817 and left behind an estate with an estimated value of almost $20,000, which today equates to roughly $500,000.Īnthony Johnson was a black man who emigrated from Angola to America during the early 1600s, a time when both black people and white people worked as indentured servants and not slaves. Cuffee was politically active and sought to establish a prosperous colony for black people to return to in Africa.

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He is also credited as the first free African American to visit the White House and meet with a sitting president.

Cuffee managed to build a lucrative shipping business and established the first racially integrated school in Westport, Massachusetts. In 1776, his hard work earned him enough money to purchase a 116-acre farm in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. He taught himself to read and write and held various jobs as a farmer, carpenter, and fisherman. Paul Cuffee grew up in Massachusetts as the youngest of 10 children.Īlthough he had no formal education, he was able to learn arithmetic and navigation through a family friend. His father, Cuffee Slocum, was a freed slave, and his mother was a Native American named Ruth Moses. Paul Cuffee was a prodigious sea captain and entrepreneur born in 1759.