Freedom Suits
Seventeenth-century Virginians created the law of slavery that for two and a half centuries ruled the lives of hundreds of thousands of people of African and of American Indian origin and descent. The law of slavery declared that some people were property and that children of enslaved women were born into lifetime slavery. Because the laws allowing enslavement of Indians changed several times, many enslaved Virginians filed freedom suits in the courts claiming that they were descendants of illegally enslaved Indian women.