President Barack Obama’s family lineage has supposedly been linked to the very first slave in the United States. Ironically, the slave, John Punch, has been connected to the President’s mother, who was white. Punch was an indentured servant in Virginia and is considered the first enslaved African in the colonies that formed America. He evidently fathered children with a white woman who gave up her free status.
Punch, whose existence in the colonies dates back to 1640, tried to escape slavery with two white servants and was instead sentenced to a lifetime of servitude after re-capture (the white slaves were sentenced to prison and whippings). This was during a period that slavery was still in formation and there were no laws or rules governing the treatment or conditions of slaves. There is no clear evidence whether the first slaves were treated as indentured servants or as slaves in Virginia.
