Anthony Johnson and How Slavery Came About in Early America

 

 

 SDC News One | Long Read

Anthony Johnson and the Unfinished Story of Early American Labor

WASHINGTON [IFS] -- History rarely moves in straight lines. It twists through contradictions, uncomfortable facts, and human stories that refuse simple labels. Few figures capture that complexity more than Anthony Johnson, a man whose life traces the turbulent moment when early colonial labor systems in America were shifting — and hardening — into something far darker.

His story begins not with power, but with survival.

Arrival in a New World — 1621

In 1621, a man recorded only as “Antonio” arrived in the English Colony of Virginia aboard the ship James. Historical records strongly suggest he was born in what is now Portuguese Angola, captured and forced into the Atlantic slave trade before crossing the ocean.

Early Virginia was still experimental and chaotic. Tobacco had become the colony’s economic engine, and labor demand was intense. Africans, Europeans, and Indigenous people all appeared within a fluid — if deeply unequal — labor system that mixed indentured servitude, contract labor, and forms of forced work not yet fully defined by law.

Antonio was placed under the control of merchant Edward Bennett, working as an unfree laborer in a world where survival itself was uncertain. Disease, conflict, and brutal working conditions meant many never lived long enough to see freedom.

Antonio did.

A Path to Freedom

By the mid-1630s, Antonio — now known as Anthony Johnson — and his wife Mary had gained their freedom, likely after serving a period of indenture. Freedom for Black people in colonial Virginia was rare but not unheard of in this early period.

The Johnsons built something remarkable for their time: stability.

Using the headright system, which granted land to settlers who financed laborers’ passage to the colony, they accumulated a 250-acre tobacco estate on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Tax records show the family prospered, raising livestock and cultivating tobacco alongside both white and Black neighbors.

For a brief moment in American history, the boundaries of race, status, and property were less rigid than they would soon become. Anthony Johnson stood as evidence that social mobility, however limited, was still possible.

That window would not stay open long.

The John Casor Case — 1655

Johnson’s name enters legal history most prominently through a dispute that would echo through centuries.

In 1655, a man named John Casor, who had been working for Johnson, claimed his period of indentured service had ended. Casor argued he deserved release, and another colonist briefly took him in.

Johnson fought back in court.

His argument was clear: Casor was not merely indentured — he was bound to serve for life. The Northampton County Court sided with Johnson, ruling that Casor was legally obligated to serve Johnson permanently.

Historians often describe this decision as one of the earliest civil cases in English America to declare someone a slave for life through court judgment. The ruling did not create slavery overnight — forced labor already existed — but it helped push colonial law toward a more permanent and rigid system.

The irony remains striking: a formerly unfree African man successfully used colonial law to assert lifelong ownership over another man.

Yet historians caution against oversimplification. The legal environment was already shifting, and Johnson was operating within a world where labor disputes were increasingly being settled through emerging racialized rules.

A System Already Taking Shape

Long before Johnson’s court victory, the colonies had begun carving distinctions between Europeans and Africans.

In 1640, the case of John Punch marked a turning point when an African servant received permanent servitude as punishment, while his European counterparts received lighter penalties. Such rulings signaled a growing tendency to tie labor status to race.

The Casor case, then, was not a starting point but another milestone in a slow transformation — a legal evolution that gradually replaced mixed systems of servitude with hereditary, race-based slavery.

Johnson did not invent this system. But his case became part of its legal foundation.

A Life Rewritten by Law

If Johnson once embodied possibility, the end of his life showed how rapidly that possibility was disappearing.

When he died in 1670, colonial authorities ruled that his land could be taken by a white neighbor. The court declared that Johnson, as a Black man, was “not a citizen of the colony,” stripping his family of property rights that might have been protected only years earlier.

In a single legal decision, the fragile freedoms that had allowed Johnson to prosper were erased.

By the late 1600s, Virginia’s laws increasingly defined slavery as hereditary, permanent, and tied specifically to African ancestry — creating a racial hierarchy that would shape centuries of American history.

The Legacy — Complicated, Not Comfortable

Anthony Johnson’s story challenges simple narratives.

He was not a symbol of liberation, nor a lone architect of slavery. He was a man navigating a volatile legal and economic world, adapting to the systems around him to secure survival and prosperity for his family.

His life reveals a moment when race and status were not yet fully locked in place — and how swiftly that ambiguity disappeared as colonial lawmakers constructed a durable system of racialized slavery.

To reduce Johnson to a single role misses the larger truth: he was both a product of his time and a participant in its contradictions.

History often asks uncomfortable questions. Johnson’s life asks perhaps the hardest one of all: how systems evolve not through one decision or one individual, but through countless choices made inside imperfect circumstances — until those choices harden into law.

And once written into law, they can shape generations.

-30- 

As Accountability's Vanishing Act - MAGA politics quickly evaporates the moment responsibility appear

 

From the Outside Looking In: How Power, Not Policy, Is Driving America’s Descent

By SDC News One, IFS News Writers

WEST SACRAMENTO CA [IFS] -- Watching the United States from abroad right now is like witnessing a superpower experiment with medieval politics in real time. Not medieval in aesthetics, but in structure: loyalty over law, force over legitimacy, spectacle over governance. This administration doesn’t merely bend democratic norms—it treats them as optional suggestions, to be discarded whenever inconvenient.

What’s striking isn’t just the cruelty or the incoherence. It’s the absence of moral struggle. Moral choice only exists when decision-makers possess morals to begin with. In this administration, there is no visible tension between what is legal, what is ethical, and what is politically expedient—because expedience always wins.

Kristi Noem. Stephen Miller. Donald Trump. Marco Rubio. Pete Hegseth. The names differ, but the pattern is the same. These are not people wrestling with the weight of power. They behave like one-dimensional villains written for a bad movie—figures who seem to draw emotional satisfaction from dominance, chaos, and humiliation rather than stability or progress. That’s not rhetorical exaggeration; it’s a description of observable behavior.

And yet, despite mounting scandals, deaths, lawsuits, and constitutional alarms, there is no sign of panic within the regime. No desperation. No retreat. What we’re seeing instead is relentless optics management—damage control disguised as leadership. Press conferences, blame-shifting, selective outrage. Governance reduced to performance.

The most dangerous number in America right now isn’t a budget deficit or a casualty count. It’s 39 percent. That approval rating represents tens of millions of people—friends, neighbors, coworkers—who continue to endorse or excuse authoritarian behavior as long as it’s wrapped in familiar cultural language. These aren’t fringe extremists. They are integrated into daily life, carrying belief systems that normalize cruelty, excuse lawlessness, and frame domination as patriotism.

History shows that democracies don’t collapse when approval hits zero. They collapse when a committed minority decides that cruelty is acceptable if it’s aimed at the “right” people.

The Accountability Vanishing Act

One of the defining traits of MAGA politics is how quickly power evaporates the moment responsibility appears. No movement claims omnipotence faster—“I alone can fix it”—and none disowns its own actions more quickly when consequences arrive.

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“I wasn’t involved.”

“I was just following orders.”

Kristi Noem’s finger-pointing fits this pattern perfectly. Responsibility is always lateral or downward, never upward. Trump and Miller sit at the center of the decision-making web, yet subordinates are expected to absorb the fallout while leadership pretends ignorance. Throwing Trump and Miller under the bus wouldn’t absolve Noem—but it would at least acknowledge reality: this is not rogue behavior. It’s coordinated governance.

The “just following orders” defense should terrify anyone who understands history. It is not a defense. It is a confession.

Immigration as a Narrative Wrapper

This moment is not fundamentally about immigration. Immigration is the packaging, not the product.

What’s actually happening is a systematic demonstration of executive reach. How far can federal force go? Where can it operate? Who can it target? How aggressively can it act before meaningful resistance emerges?

The raids, the locations, the timing, the optics—it’s all political communication. This is not about policy efficiency or border management. It’s about sending a message: we can reach anyone, anywhere, and the rules are flexible if we say they are.

ICE, under this framework, has shifted from law enforcement into something far more dangerous: a political instrument. Allegations of abuse, deaths in custody, constitutional violations, and a total lack of accountability are not accidental failures. They are structural outcomes of a system designed to reward aggression and punish restraint.

And here’s the critical mistake many Americans make: believing this machinery will only ever be used against immigrants. History says otherwise. Once institutions are trained to operate without consequence, the circle of targets always expands.

The Comfort With Cruelty

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect, from the outside, is not the violence or the lies—it’s how comfortable so many people have become with them. The language dehumanizes. The imagery brutalizes. And the public response shrugs.

A nation doesn’t slide toward authoritarianism because of one man or one election. It slides because enough people decide the chaos isn’t disqualifying. Because outrage becomes background noise. Because “this doesn’t affect me” becomes the loudest political philosophy in the room.

That’s why the unexpected convergence happening now matters. Libertarian constitutionalists and social democrats standing on the same side of the barricade wasn’t on anyone’s prediction list—but authoritarian pressure has a way of clarifying priorities. When executive power starts ignoring limits, ideology becomes secondary to survival.

Call it de-MAGAfying the political culture—not by purging people, but by dismantling the myths that keep the movement alive: the myth of victimhood, the myth of innocence, the myth that cruelty equals strength.

No More Plausible Deniability

You cannot claim total authority and total ignorance at the same time. You cannot celebrate force and then deny its outcomes. You cannot build a system that rewards violence and act shocked when bodies appear.

From outside the United States, this moment looks less like partisan conflict and more like a stress test of democratic endurance. The question isn’t whether the administration is dangerous—that’s already answered. The question is whether enough people are willing to stop pretending this is normal.

Because history is very clear about what happens when power is tested and no one pushes back.

-30-

Federal Judge Moves to Preserve Evidence in Alex Pretti Shooting

 BREAKING NEWS | Federal Judge Moves to Preserve Evidence in Alex Pretti Shooting

By SDC News One

In a rare and extraordinary move, a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump has issued an emergency restraining order overnight—before hearing from the Trump Administration—directing the federal government to take no action that could “conceal, destroy, or alter” evidence connected to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti.

The order, issued by U.S. District Judge Jerry W. Blackwell Tostrud in Minnesota, signals deep judicial concern about the integrity of the evidence in a case involving the killing of a U.S. citizen by a federal officer. Legal analysts say the speed and scope of the order strongly suggest that the court does not trust the administration to preserve the crime scene on its own.

According to reporting and legal analysis by Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok, the judge’s action is virtually unheard of at this early stage. Emergency restraining orders are typically reserved for situations where irreparable harm is imminent. Here, the harm identified by the court is the potential loss or manipulation of evidence in a case that raises serious constitutional questions.

A Case With Constitutional Stakes

Alex Pretti was reportedly exercising both his First Amendment rights—peacefully protesting and recording law enforcement—and his Second Amendment rights, as a legally armed citizen, at the time of the encounter that ended in his death. Civil rights attorneys argue that this places the shooting squarely at the intersection of free speech, the right to bear arms, and limits on federal law enforcement power.

Judge Tostrud’s order specifically prohibits any federal agency or agent from altering body camera footage, radio logs, weapons, forensic materials, or physical aspects of the scene. The court also directed that records related to the operation be preserved immediately.

Legal experts note that the judge did not wait for briefing from the Trump Administration—a highly unusual step—underscoring the court’s concern that delay itself could compromise justice.

Public Pressure Breaks Through the MAGA Wall

The ruling comes amid intensifying public outrage. Protests, independent journalism, and sustained online scrutiny have pushed the story into the national spotlight. That pressure now appears to be producing visible cracks within pro-Trump political circles.

In a striking development, several MAGA-aligned senators, members of Congress, and conservative media figures, including outlets within Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, have begun publicly urging Donald Trump to withdraw federal forces from Minnesota.

While these figures have stopped short of condemning the shooting outright, their calls for de-escalation represent a notable shift. For weeks, the administration’s actions had been defended reflexively. Now, even loyal allies are signaling concern that continued federal operations in Minnesota risk further deaths—and further political fallout.

A Judge From Trump’s Own Bench

Perhaps most damning for the administration is the source of the rebuke. Judge Tostrud is not a Biden appointee, not a progressive jurist, and not an outsider to conservative legal circles. He was appointed by Trump himself.

That fact has not been lost on observers.

“If even Trump-appointed judges are acting preemptively to stop this administration from tampering with evidence,” Popok noted, “it tells you how little credibility the administration has left in federal court.”

What Comes Next

The restraining order is temporary, but it sets the tone for what could become a sweeping federal civil rights case. Further hearings are expected, where the administration will finally be required to explain its actions under oath.

For now, the evidence is frozen, the spotlight is bright, and the message from the judiciary is unmistakable: the rule of law still applies—even to an administration accustomed to operating as if it doesn’t.

This story is developing.

White American history does not suffer from a shortage of white fury. Quite the opposite.

 

The Silence After the Shock

Why White America’s Rage Has So Often Pointed Down—and Why It Hesitates When Power Turns on It

By SDC News One, IFS News Writers

WASHINGTON [IFS] -- In the long, violent ledger of American history, one pattern repeats with unsettling clarity: when white Americans have felt their social order threatened from below, the response has been immediate, organized, and brutal. When the threat comes from above—from the state, from concentrated wealth, from federal power—the response has often been slower, fragmented, and hesitant.

That contrast helps explain why, even after the public killing of white citizens in plain view of cameras, the national reaction can feel oddly muted. Not absent—but restrained. Disbelieving. Polite. Almost procedural.

This is not a question of courage. It is a question of conditioning.

A History of Immediate White Rage—When the Target Was Black

American history does not suffer from a shortage of white fury. Quite the opposite.

Entire Black towns—Wilmington (1898), Tulsa (1921), Rosewood (1923)—were erased after rumors, accusations, or the mere assertion of Black political or economic autonomy. Mobs did not wait for investigations. Due process was not debated. Violence was understood as corrective, even righteous.

White mobs lynched Black men and boys for being accused, suspected, or simply present. Black families attempting to vote were met with terror. Children like Ruby Bridges required federal troops to walk into a school because white adults summoned rage at the sight of integration.

Neighborhoods were policed through intimidation. Crosses burned. Midnight rides enforced racial boundaries. Later, when spectacle violence became less acceptable, bureaucracy took over: zoning laws, redlining, “urban renewal,” highways and reservoirs deliberately routed through Black neighborhoods, all in the name of progress.

White America did not lack energy then. It had strategy. It had numbers. It had institutional backing.

Power Was Never the Target—Order Was

What united those moments was not chaos, but preservation. The violence was not revolutionary; it was conservative in the literal sense—meant to conserve a racial and economic hierarchy.

Black Americans were not threatening wealth at the top. They were threatening proximity. Schools. Jobs. Neighborhoods. Ballots. The fury flowed downward, not upward.

That distinction matters now.

Because when state power—through federal agencies, militarized policing, or immigration enforcement—turns its force inward and outward at the same time, the target is no longer “the other.” It is the abstract machinery of governance itself. And that is far harder to process for people raised to trust it.

The Shock of the Unthinkable

For generations, many white Americans were taught—explicitly or implicitly—that state violence was something that happened for them, not to them.

It happened to Indigenous people.

To Black communities.

To immigrants.

To “suspects.”

To “illegals.”

To people who “should have complied.”

So when white citizens are killed publicly, and justice appears stalled or evasive, the reaction is often disbelief rather than fury. Shock instead of mobilization.

“This isn’t how it works,” becomes the unspoken refrain.

But it has always worked this way—just not for them.

Why the Streets Feel Quietly Wrong

There are marches. There are chants. There are signs. But the tone can feel strangely restrained—almost social. Smiling. Costumed. Managed.

That is not because people do not care. It is because many have not yet crossed the psychological threshold that Black Americans crossed long ago: the realization that the system is not malfunctioning—it is functioning as designed.

Black Americans learned, through blood and repetition, that cameras do not guarantee justice. That visibility does not equal accountability. That dignity is not automatically recognized.

So when some Black voices now say, “We’re sitting this one out,” it is not indifference. It is historical exhaustion.

For generations, Black Americans fought for a democracy that promised inclusion and delivered surveillance. They marched when white Americans stayed home. They warned when others laughed. And in recent years, many were actively opposed—at the ballot box and in public discourse.

Solidarity is not an infinite resource.

The Myth That Delays Revolt

Another factor stalls urgency: the American Dream.

Many white Americans still believe—consciously or not—that proximity to power is possible. That today’s injustice is an anomaly, not a pattern. That tomorrow they might join the ranks of those protected rather than targeted.

That belief dampens rage. It turns resistance into negotiation.

If you think the system might still work for you, you hesitate to confront it.

Citizenship, Rights, and a Dangerous Falsehood

Some voices insist that only certain people deserve due process—that rights belong exclusively to “foundational” citizens. That is not how the Constitution works. Courts have repeatedly affirmed that due process applies to persons, not just citizens.

But the persistence of this belief reveals something deeper: a hierarchy of worth that has always existed in practice, if not law.

Once that hierarchy becomes unstable—once people previously protected find themselves exposed—the moral math changes. Slowly.

The World Is Watching—And So Is History

Other nations are watching what happens when a majority population experiences what minorities have long endured: public killing, delayed justice, official silence.

The question is not whether white Americans are angry. Many are.

The question is whether that anger will finally turn upward—toward concentrated power, unaccountable institutions, and a political economy that feeds on division—or whether it will dissolve back into denial.

A Closing Truth

Black Americans are not obligated to lead this fight again.

Not after centuries.

Not after recent betrayals.

Not after being told to wait, comply, vote harder, protest nicer.

If democracy is to work for everyone, those who have historically benefited most from it will have to fight for it without expecting others to absorb the blows.

History shows that white America has never lacked energy.

The only unanswered question is what—and who—it is finally willing to use it against.

Peace.

- 30 -

Fake Black Panther Leader EXPOSED as Covert Operative

Why Jungle Wars Break Superpowers

 Modern powers often mistake technology for inevitability. 

By SDC News One, IFS News Writers, 

 WASHINGTON [IFS] --They assume satellites, drones, armored columns, and precision strikes can impose will anywhere on earth. Yet history keeps proving there are landscapes where power falters — and none humbles it faster than the jungle.

Why Jungle Wars Break Superpowers

Jungle warfare erases advantages. Satellites can’t see through canopy. Armor bogs down in mud and roots. Airpower becomes unreliable under perpetual cloud and mist. Soldiers fight heat as much as enemies, and supply lines rot faster than morale. Against opponents deeply tied to the terrain — who know every contour, trail, and village — the metrics of power start to invert. Every engagement becomes less about superiority and more about survival.

Most damaging of all, time turns traitor. Democracies and global powers measure success in news cycles and election terms. Guerrillas measure it in generations. The jungle rewards patience, punishes impatience, and slowly extracts a political price no weapon can prevent. By the time the body count says “victory,” the will to fight has already decayed.

The United States learned this lesson bitterly in Vietnam. It did not lose for lack of firepower, industry, or courage. It lost because strength was the wrong instrument. Võ Nguyên Giáp understood this balance better than anyone. “The enemy will be defeated,” he said, “not by one battle, but by a million small failures.” His genius was not in matching America’s might, but in ensuring that each day, somewhere, America would lose just a little — a helicopter, a village, a headline, or a measure of faith in its own purpose.

The lesson remains as urgent as ever. Cutting-edge surveillance cannot penetrate thick foliage; logistic chains still choke in humidity; and strategic resolve still bends under the weight of drawn-out uncertainty. In the jungle, there is no decisive victory, only slow erosion. The environment itself becomes an ally to those who fight for home and an enemy to those who fight from afar.

Any modern leader tempted to talk lightly about entering a jungle war — anywhere, for any reason — should study Vietnam not as ancient history but as ongoing caution. Jungles don’t forgive hubris. They grind it down. Relentlessly. Patiently. Historically. And in the end, they always collect their due.

- 30 -

Gerald Anderson Lawson - Inventor of the video game cartridge and joystick

 

Inventor of the video game cartridge and joystick

Summarized by AI from the post below

The Nerds District 🎮

Jonathan Robinson

 ·February 9, 2024 ·

I'm a huge video game history nerd, I collect old consoles and stuff. That's my main nerd wheelhouse. So from time to time I like to share pictures of my collection or random trivia.

Anyway, since it is Black History month here in the states, I thought it would be apt to talk about somebody who was absolutely a game changer in our nerd sphere.

Meet Gerald Anderson Lawson, the man who did more than just about anybody in designing one of the most influential consoles of all time: the Fairchild Channel F.

If you haven't heard of the Channel F, that's alright. The console itself didn't take off too hard. But it is super important for one specific reason, it was the FIRST console to use external cartridges for its games. An approach that later took the world by storm when it was adopted by Atari.

In fact, Gerald Lawson led the team that developed the cart system when designing the Channel F. Not only did he invent the video game cart, but he also pioneered other technology that premiered in the channel F, such as an 8-way joystick he designed, AND the pause button.

So, TL;DR: This is Gerald Anderson Lawson. He invented the video game cartridge, the 8-direction joystick, and the MFing PAUSE BUTTON. So take a moment out of your day to pay respects to one of the true Godfathers of our modern gaming experience.