Who is the forgotten African American legislator? 

Mathias de Sousa, an African of mixed descent, was one of a handful of people of color among the 200 European colonists who, in 1634, first settled what is now the state of Maryland. He was the indentured servant of a Catholic priest, Andrew White, a Jesuit who had come to the New World to convert Indians. Indentured servants were not slaves, but people who agreed to work off the cost of their passages. 

When de Sousa had paid back his contract and become free, he became a citizen, voted in the colonial legislature, and became prosperous by trading with the local Native Americans. In 1641, de Sousa himself was elected to the General Assembly, becoming the first black American to hold public office. 

Tolerance was in the air. Maryland was settled to provide a refuge offering freedom for Catholics from religious restrictions in England. Leonard Calvert, the younger brother of Lord Baltimore, made peace with the Indians rather than exploit the colony for gold. In 1649 Maryland's Act of Religious Toleration became a landmark for freedom. Mathias De Sousa was elected by an almost totally white population to represent them. 

Like Virginia and other Southern colonies, however, Maryland soon moved to a system of race-based slavery. The reason was economic: the increasing production of labor-intensive crops like tobacco and rice required an unlimited supply of cheap workers. 

Mathias de Sousa has been largely forgotten by history. Perhaps the reason is that he represents that brief moment in America when Europeans and Africans lived together in some sort of racial equality. It would be 1970 before Maryland sent an African American to Congress. But in that fleeting national moment in the mid-17th century, before slavery became black and permanent, de Sousa served as a representative of the people in a democratically elected legislature.