Lifetime slavery began in America in 1655. Before that in these English colonies the custom was to buy a slave from the slave trader and let him serve for 7 years. Having paid off his debt he was then considered a free man and was given his freedom dues, which included a farmhouse, farmland, farming tools and clothes, a mule, a firearm and ammunition, and his first years worth of seed corn to get his farm started. In 1655 Anthony Johnson, a wealthy freed slave from Angola, looked at his four servants and considered that the black man should be his property forever, as was the custom in Africa. A judge in Virginia granted him that right, bringing lifetime slavery to America for the first time. Thanks Anthony Johnson, you are a total asshole.