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Thefirst Africans in Virginia were a group of "twenty and odd" captive persons originally from modern-dayAngola who landed atOld Point Comfort inHampton, Virginia in late August 1619 after their 11-week journey. Their arrival is seen as a beginning of thehistory of slavery in Virginia andBritish colonies in North America, although they were not inchattel slavery as it would develop in the United States, but were sold asindentured servants and had mostly worked off their indentures and were free by 1630.[1] These colonies would go on to secede and become the United States in 1776. The landing of these captive Africans is also seen as a starting point forAfrican American history, given that they were the first such group in mainlandBritish America.[2][3]
They were sold to the governor of Virginia by CaptainJohn Colyn Jope,[4] the commander of theWhite Lion, who attacked and plundered them from theslave shipSão João Baptista, which was carrying over three hundred people who had been kidnapped from theKingdom of Ndongo and were being forcibly sailed toNew Spain (modern-dayMexico).[5] Upon arrival, they were sold as indentured servants.[1] Recognition of this event has been promoted since 1994 by Calvin Pearson and "Project 1619 Inc", an organization he founded in 2007, whose work led theVirginia Department of Historic Resources to install a historic marker commemorating this event atOld Point Comfort in 2007 and the designation of this area as theFort Monroe National Monument in 2011.[6]
Several commemorations of this event took place on its 400th anniversary in August 2019, including the starting ofThe 1619 Project (not associated with Project 1619, Inc.) with a publication byNikole Hannah-Jones commemorating this event and theYear of Return, Ghana 2019 to encourage theAfrican diaspora to settle in and invest inAfrica.
During theAtlantic slave trade, starting in the 16th century, Portuguese slave traders brought large numbers of African people across the Atlantic to work in theircolonies in the Americas, such asBrazil. An estimated 4.9 million people from Africa were brought to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[7] Thousands of people were captured byPortuguese slave traders and their African allies such as theImbangala, in invasions of theKingdom of Ndongo (part of modern Angola) under GovernorLuís Mendes de Vasconcellos.[8] These captives were taken to port and often sent to other parts of theSpanish andPortuguese Empires, which were brought together in that time by theIberian Union.[2] Those taken captive from Angola may have belonged to theAmbundu ethnic group,[9][3] an interpretation used at theJamestown Settlement Galleries.[10]
In 1619, the PortuguesefluytSan Juan Bautista took a large group through theMiddle Passage fromLuanda in Angola to the bay ofVeracruz in Mexico. Of the 350 total on theslave ship, about 143 died in the voyage, and 24 children were sold during a stop at theColony of Santiago in Jamaica, with 123 enslaved people eventually being taken toVeracruz, in addition to the smaller group of 20-30 taken by the privateers,[2] or perhaps double that amount.[11]
Near Veracruz in theBay of Campeche, the English privateersWhite Lion andTreasurer, operating under Dutch and Savoyardletters of marque and sponsored by theEarl of Warwick andSamuel Argall, attacked theSan Juan Bautista, and each took 20-30 of the African captives toOld Point Comfort on Hampton Roads at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula, the first time such a group was brought to mainlandEnglish America.[2][12] Of those aboard theTreasurer, only a few were sold in Virginia, the majority being taken shortly thereafter toNathaniel Butler in Bermuda.[11][3] English privateers had been sailing under Dutch and other flags since the 1604Treaty of London concluded the Anglo-Spanish War.
The primary source document for theWhite Lion's arrival is as follows:[13]
About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunes arriued at Point-Comfort, the Comandor name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. They mett wth the Trer in the West Indyes, and determyned to hold consort shipp hetherward, but in their passage lost one the other. He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, wth theGovernor and Cape Marchant bought for vietualle (whereof he was in greate need as he p'tended) at the best and easyest rate they could. He hadd a largge and ample Comyssion from his Excellency to range and to take purchase in the West Indyes.
— Records of theVirginia Company (1619)
One of the enslaved women from theTreasurer was calledAngela, who was purchased by Captain William Peirce. She is the earliest historically attested enslaved African in the colony.[14]
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller included adiorama of the 1619 arrival as part of her commission for the 1907Jamestown Exposition, the first such granted to an African-American woman artist from the U.S. government. This work is no longer extant.
The 1940American Negro Exposition included a historical diorama with a similar theme, and was restored in the 21st century.[15][16] It is part of the collection of theLegacy Museum of Tuskegee University.
Sidney E. King painted a historical scene of the 1619 arrival for the National Park Service in the 1950s.[17]
Abraham Lincoln in hissecond inaugural address of 1865 refers to "the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil", which would be approximately 1615, according to scholarDiana Schaub an allusion to the events of 1619.
The arrival was recognized byGeorge Washington Williams as the starting point for African American history in the first comprehensive book ever written on the topic, theHistory of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880: Negroes As Slaves, As Soldiers, And As Citizens, published in 1882.
The 350th anniversary of the arrival was marked in 1969 by a Virginia effort organized by civil rights attorneyOliver Hill, and with featured speakerSamuel DeWitt Proctor; it was however opposed by others including then-freshman state senator and future-GovernorDouglas Wilder as an occasion inappropriate for celebration. There was also a commemoration of the 375th anniversary in 1994.[18]
The 400th anniversary in 2019 was marked by the congressionally-chartered "400 Years of African-American History Commission" under the National Park Service, which administersFort Monroe National Monument.[19] That year also sawThe 1619 Project ofThe New York Times and theYear of Return in Ghana.