First Africans in Virginia. August 20, 1619.

On this day in history, August 20, 1619, twenty Africans, kidnapped by the Portuguese in Angola, make landfall in the British colony of Virginia and are subsequently purchased by the English colonists. The appearance of enslaved Africans in the New World marks the beginning of 250 years of slavery in North America.

History Daily: 365 Fascinating Happenings Volume 1 & Volume 2 – August 20, 1619

Founded at Jamestown in 1607, the Virginia Colony was home to close to seven hundred inhabitants by 1619. The first enslaved Africans to arrive in Virginia landed at Point Comfort in what is today known as Fort Monroe. Most of their names and the exact number who endured at Point Comfort have been lost to history, but much is known about their journey.

They were initially kidnapped by Portuguese colonial forces, who sent captured Kongo and Ndongo people to the port of Luanda, the capital of modern-day Angola. They were then forced onto the San Juan Bautista ship, which set sail for Veracruz in the New Spain (Mexico) colony. As was quite common, about 150 of the 350 captives aboard the ship perished during the trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Then, as it approached Vera Cruz, the ship was attacked by two privateer ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer. Crews from both vessels kidnapped up to 60 of the San Juan Bautista’s enslaved people. The White Lion docked at Virginia Colony’s Point Comfort and traded some prisoners for food on August 20, 1619.

Historians state that those captured were theoretically sold as indentured servants. Indentured servants agreed, or in most cases were forced, to work with no pay for a pre-determined amount of time, often to pay off a debt, and could legally expect to become free at the end of the contract. Many Europeans who arrived in North America came as indentured servants. Despite this classification – and records indicating that some of them eventually obtained their freedom – it is clear that the Africans arriving at Point Comfort in 1619 were forced into servitude and fit the description of an enslaved person.

The arrival at Point Comfort marked a new period in the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which endured for nearly 250 years. The trade extracted approximately 12 million Africans from Africa, depositing roughly 5 million in Brazil and over 3 million in the Caribbean. Though the number of Africans brought to mainland North America was relatively small – approximately 400,000 – their labor and that of their descendants were critical to the economies of the British colonies and, later, the United States.

Two Africans who arrived in Point Comfort, Antonio, and Isabella, became “servants” of Captain William Tucker, commander of the settlement. Their son, William, was the first African child to have been born in North America, and under the law at the time, he was born a freeman. In the coming decades, however, slavery became codified.

Another African who arrived on the Treasurer was a female named Angela. She was purchased by Captain William Pierce. After Pierce purchased her, Angela worked for his household. In 1622, local indigenous people attacked the colony and killed 347 inhabitants; Angela survived. The attack was accompanied by a period of famine, which Angela also survived. In 1625, she was registered in the Virginia Colony muster as one of four servants that belonged to the Peirces and the only Black person. After 1625 Angela no longer shows up in the historical record. Her date of death is unknown.

Servants of African origin were frequently forced to go on working after the expiration of their contract, and in 1640 a Virginia court sentenced disobedient servant John Punch to a lifetime of slavery. With fewer white indentured servants arriving from England, African servants were more regularly held for life. In 1662, a Virginia court decided that children born to enslaved mothers were the belongings of the mother’s owner.

As crops like tobacco, sugar, and cotton became mainstays of the colonial economy, slavery became its motor. Though the slave trade was prohibited in 1807, chattel slavery and the plantation economy made possible flourished in the Southern United States. The 1860 census found 3,953,760 enslaved people in the United States, which made up 13 percent of the population.

 The disagreement between abolitionists and those who wanted to preserve and spread slavery was a significant reason for the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln freed enslaved people in the South with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. However, it was not until the creation of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 that slavery was systematically abolished in America.

In the end, 246 brutal years of slavery had an inestimable effect on American society. It would require an additional century after the Civil War for racial segregation to be declared unconstitutional. Still, the end of state-sanctioned racism did not end racism and discrimination in America. Because it was a critical part of the culture and economy of early America after its introduction in Jamestown, slavery is often regarded as the nation’s “original sin.”

Image: “Landing Negroes at Jamestown from Dutch man-of-war, 1619”. This 1901 illustration’s caption is incorrect, as The White Lion was an English privateer operating under a Dutch letter of marque and landed at nearby Old Point Comfort. (Wikimedia Commons.)