Anthony Johnson started the institution of slavery in Virginia in 1854, when he filed suit to declare that John Casor, a black indentured servant, be considered Johnson's slave for life. Prior to that point, blacks came over as indentured servants, served a term of a few years to pay their passage, and then were free.
Anthony Johnson, Virginia's first true slave-owner, was black. He came across as an indentured servant in 1621, in the first ship carrying Africans to Jamestown.
Something they don't teach you in school during Black History Month.