Before the Virginia Assembly passed its Act Concerning Servants and Slaves, which became known as the Virginia Slave Codes, in 1705, enslaved Blacks in the colony had some rights. Beginning in 1619 when the first Africans arrived in Jamestown aboard a Dutch ship, having been taken from Africa and forced into labor, there was a question as to their actual status in Virginia. There are records of free Blacks in Virginia throughout the 1600s, but as more Africans arrived, white planters and whites in general began to push the government for concrete laws not only to govern slavery and indentured servitude but also to distinguish white from Black.