St. Alban's Anti-Racism Team Lecture/Discussion Series: Persons as Property: The Legal Architecture of Slavery
Thu, Nov 12
|St. Alban's (Parish Hall)
Time & Location
Nov 12, 2026, 6:30 PM
St. Alban's (Parish Hall), 301 Caldwell Ln, Davidson, NC 28036, USA
About the event
As part of the parish’s ongoing efforts to respond to U.S. racism through a Christian perspective, we offer two lecture/discussion sessions (November 12 and 19) on the “cost of slavery,” understood in economic, financial, and human terms.
Session 1: Persons as Property: The Legal Architecture of Slavery
Thursday, November 12 | 6:30–8:30 p.m. | St. Alban's Parish Hall | Light meal provided
Slavery in America did not rest on force alone. It was built and sustained by law. Colonial legislatures and courts slowly constructed a system that turned human beings into property. In 1662, Virginia declared that a child's status followed the mother. In 1705 it classified enslaved people as real estate. Later statutes made them chattel that could be bought, mortgaged, inherited, insured and taxed.
This talk traces legal architecture: the slave codes, property and inheritance law, and court decisions such as North Carolina's State v. Mann (1830). It…