History is a Weird Place: The case of Johnson vs Parker

(Wikipedia) - ... Sustaining the claim of Anthony Johnson to the perpetual service of John Casor the court gave judicial sanction to the right of Negroes to own slaves of their own race. Indeed no earlier record, to our knowledge, has been found of judicial support given to slavery in Virginia except as a punishment for crime. The defendant, John Casor, thus became the first individual known to be declared a slave in what later became the United States.
In 1665 Anthony Johnson and his wife Mary, his son John and his wife Susanna, and their slave John Casor moved to Somerset County, Maryland. Casor remained Johnson's slave for the rest of his life. Continued