"And for a time, free black people could even "own" the services of white indentured servants in Virginia as well. Free blacks owned slaves in Boston by 1724 and in Connecticut by 1783; by 1790, 48 black people in Maryland owned 143 slaves. One particularly notorious black Maryland farmer named Nat Butler "regularly purchased and sold Negroes for the Southern trade," Halliburton wrote." Dr. Henry Louis Gates
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I have previously expressed my admiration for the scholarship of Doctor Gates. He is a man who truly understands that "the truth shall make you free." pl
