My sophomores are doing presentations this month and next, and this slide popped up today during one team’s project, “Interesting Facts about America.” I had to talk to them afterward to address the inconsistencies and the doubtful source material.

So much wrong in one image

Well, some of the details are correct. There was a free black man named Anthony Johnson, who had been an indentured servant from Angola. He was alive in the late 1600s, had a tobacco farm, and did in fact have an indentured servant named John Casor. Casor took Johnson to court, arguing he was an indentured servant forced to work past his indenture. The court ruled in his favor, and he then went to work for another man. Johnson then sued Casor’s new employer, and the court ruled in Johnson’s favor, stating that Casor had violated the terms of his indenture and had to forfeit his freedom.
en.wikipedia.org

The trouble with the slide, apart from the fake history of Johnson being the “father of American slavery,” is the engraving (or photo — it’s hard to tell) accompanying it. Real historical website sites have no photos or images of Anthony Johnson, because in the late 1600s, there were certainly no cameras. The man in the image is dressed like someone from the mid-1800s, and is most certainly not Anthony Johnson.

I explained to the students that they need to check the reliability of their sources before citing them, and pointed out that in any event, there were no cameras in 1654. I’m also pretty sure that engraved portraits were not common at all during that time, except among the very rich.