working for themselves: Ibid., 39.
1659–1664: Elizabeth Keye
“1662 Act XII”: In the nineteenth-century reproduction of the law, the Latin phrase is inserted. “Negro Womens Children to Serve According to the Condition of the Mother” (1662), in William Waller Henig, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619 (New York, 1823), 2:170.
“Black Besse”: Warren M. Billings, “The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A Note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 30, no. 3 (1973): 467–74. The last name is variously rendered Key, Keye, and Keyes in the documents; I have unified the spelling as Keye.
at least ten years longer: Brent Tarter and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, “Elizabeth Key (fl. 1655–1660),” Encyclopedia Virginia, www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Key_Elizabeth_fl_1655-1660.
free of economic and racial violence: Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Vintage, 1998); Alys Weinbaum, The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery: Biocapitalism and Black Feminism’s Philosophy of History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019).
1664–1669: The Virginia Law on Baptism
most Christian demographic: David Masci, “Five Facts about the Religious Lives of African Americans,” Pew Research Center, February 7, 2018, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/02/07/5-facts-about-the-religious-lives-of-african-americans/.
“It is enacted and declared”: “An Act Declaring That Baptisme of Slaves Doth Not Exempt Them from Bondage” (1667), Encyclopedia Virginia, www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_An_act_declaring_that_baptisme_of_slaves_doth_not_exempt_them_from_bondage_1667.
could not enslave other Christians: Rebecca Anne Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 17.
“Whereas some doubts have risen”: “An Act Declaring,” Encyclopedia Virginia.
To challenge slavery on moral grounds: Sean Michael Lucas, For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015), 39–45.
1669–1674: The Royal African Company
town hall: Anthony Tibbles, “TextPorts Conference, April 2000,” National Museums Liverpool, www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ports-of-transatlantic-slave-trade.
Cunard Building: “Racism and Resistance,” Historic England, historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/another-England/a-brief-history/racism-and-resistance/.
Martins Bank: “File: Slave relief: Martins Bank Liverpool.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Slave_relief,_Martins_Bank_Liverpool.jpg.
“a reminder that Liverpool”: David Ward, “Martins Bank and Its Slave Trade Iconography,” Liverpool Preservation Trust, February 22, 2011, liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/02/martins-bank-and-its-slave-trade.html?m=1.
Royal African Company (RAC): William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2013), 11.
precursor to British imperialism: Tahira Ismail, “Royal African Company and Empire,” Janus UMD Undergraduate History Journal, October 28, 2018, www.umdjanus.com/single-post/2018/10/28/The-Royal-African-Company-and-Empire.
Gambia and Ghana: Ana Mosioa-Tunya, “The Role of the Royal African Company in Slavery,” Global Black History, October 9, 2018, www.globalblackhistory.com/2018/10/the-role-of-the-royal-african-company-in-slavery.html.
granted a monopoly: Ann M. Carlos and Jamie Brown Kruse, “The Decline of the Royal African Company: Fringe Firms and the Role of the Charter,” Economic History Review, new series 49, no. 2 (1996): 291.
“had the whole, entire and only trade”: “Britain and the Trade,” National Archives (UK), www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/africa_caribbean/britain_trade.htm.
joint stock company: Derek Wilson, “Royal African Company: How the Stuarts Birthed Britain’s Slave Trade,” History Answers, December 7, 2017, www.historyanswers.co.uk/kings-queens/royal-african-company-how-the-stuarts-birthed-britains-slave-trade/.
stockholders elected: W. R. Scott, “The Constitution and Finance of the Royal African Company of England from Its Foundation till 1720,” American Historical Review 8, no. 2 (1903): 245.
monopolized the trade: Carlos and Kruse, “Decline,” 291.
company was authorized: Kenneth Gordon Davies, The Royal African Company (London: Routledge, 1999), 97–99.
crown was entitled: Scott, “Constitution,” 245.
“Negro Servants, Gold, Elephants teeth”: “Royal Proclamation Regarding the Royal African Company with Signatures, 2 December 1674,” Massachusetts Historical Society, www.masshist.org/database/1927.
convict lease system: Devon Douglas-Bowers, “Slavery by Another Name: The Convict Lease System,” Hampton Institute, October 30, 2013, thehamptoninstitute.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/slavery-by-another-name-the-convict-lease-system/.
criminalized minor offenses: David A. Love and Vijay Das, “Slavery in the U.S. Prison System,” Al Jazeera, September 9, 2017, www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/09/slavery-prison-system-170901082522072.html.
immigration industrial complex: Karen Manges Douglas and Rogelio Sáenz, “The Criminalization of Immigrants & the Immigration-Industrial Complex,” Daedalus 142, no. 3 (2013): 199–227.
1674–1679: Bacon’s Rebellion
“a carpenter, formerly”: “A List of Those That Have Been Executed for the Late Rebellion in Virginia, by Sir William Berkeley, 1676,” Virtual Jamestown, www.virtualjamestown.org/