Do you think black people would agree with that statement?
And you should know better than to challenge me. Will you ever learn? Screwball logic incoming!
"The arrival of these “20 and odd” Africans to England’s mainland American colonies in 1619 is now a focal point in history curricula. The date and their story have become symbolic of slavery’s roots, despite captive Africans likely being present in the Americas in the 1400s and as early as 1526 in the region that would become the United States.
Some experts, including Michael Guasco, a professor at Davidson College and author of
Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World, caution about placing
too much emphasis on the year 1619.
“To ignore what had been happening with relative frequency in the broader Atlantic world over the preceding 100 years or so understates the real brutality of the ongoing slave trade, of which the 1619 group were undoubtedly a part, and minimizes the significant African presence in the Atlantic world to that point,” Guasco explains. “People of African descent have been ‘here’ longer than the English colonies.”
Africans had a notable presence in the Americas before colonization
Prior to 1619, hundreds of thousands of Africans, both free and enslaved, aided the establishment and survival of colonies in the Americas and the New World. They also fought against European oppression, and, in some instances, hindered the systematic spread of colonization.
Christopher Columbus likely transported the first Africans to the Americas in the late 1490s on his expeditions to the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Their exact status, whether free or enslaved, remains disputed. But the timeline fits with what we know of the origins of the slave trade."
In late August 1619, the White Lion, an English privateer commanded by John Jope, sailed into Point Comfort and dropped anchor in the James River. Virginia
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