and the first to legally own a slave (via the courts) was none other then a black man..........Anthony Johnson
He was a white guy.
"Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath . . . brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away . . . the court doth . . . order [that] the first serve out their times with their master according to their indentures, . . . and that [the] third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere." A Virginia Court Decision (1640) from Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (January 1898), vol. 5, no. 3, p. 236.