Most of us know about Black History and some of us know little about Black History and we must continue to teach about black history becuase it gives our future kids the knowledge and identity of who we are then and now and how we got here. Because we are African-Americans that came from african ancestors. When we talk about black history we don't talk about the shaping of Black america which is important history that gets ignored or overlooked.
No one knows the hour or day of the africans arriving to america. John Rolfe who betrayed pochohontas and experimented with tobacco leaves was there and he states it was the latter end of august of 1619 a 160 ton ship brought 20 and odd negroes to america also the black gold that made capitalism possible in america also on that ship brought blues to america, it brought soul. This ship was nameless. Where did it come from? This ship was taken from the spanish who had a cargo of Africans destined for the west indies. The Jamestown Landing was the result of a deliberate commercial design. Important as Jamestown Landing was, it was only an episode in a larger drama that continued for almost four hundred years and cost the lives of forty million africans.
This drama, which is known as the African Slave Trade, had been going on for more than one hundred years when the Virginia colony was founded in 1607. By that tim European slave traders had transported tens of thousands of blacks to the New World to work in the Spanish West Indies, Brazil, Cuba and other colonies. By that time Europeans had forced hundreds of blacks to accompany them in the pioneering explorations of the American continent. The English were late starters in this sinister drama. In the years immediately preceding the Jamestown Landing, the slave trade and the colonization movement were dominated by the Spanish, Portuguse, and Dutch. This naturally displeased the English, who launched a series of raids on spanish shipping. So in 1618 a man name Samuel Argall who was the governor of the newly settle English colony of virginia sent out one of the colony's ships called "The Treasurer", to the west indies claiming they was going to get salt and goats for the colony. Somewhere in the waters of the West Indies, this ship linked up with another vessel, which had English sailors on it. The two ships later attacked and captured a Spanish frigate loaded with one hundred or more Africans.
The Treasurer and the Dutch man of war appropriated the Africans at gunpoint and sailed for virginia. But they were separated, according to the contemporary accounts, during a violent storm, which shook the ships and terrified the passengers after several weeks of being delayed they finally made it into Hampton Roads. the captain of the vessel named Jope was in need of food, and he offered to exchange black flesh for "victualle". The deal was arranged, and twenty black men and woman was sold to jamestown. The treasurer arrived shortly thereafter and landed one black woman, angelo. These Africans had spanish names when they arrived to Jamestown, Virginia. Let me say that there was nothing unusual about the mode of transportation or the price paid for the first black immigrants. Most of the first white settlers came the same way and most of them was sold they way the first blacks was sold. America - in the begining was a land of the hunted and the unfree. The Africans was not the first slaves of this land. The slave trade was already in place before the first twenty arrived in Jamestown,Virgina in 1619. The first settlers were organized around concepts of class, religion, and nationally.
In the beginning there were indentured servants. That is to say they was temporary slaves who sold themselves or were sold by others to the colonies or individual planters for a stipulated number of years (five, seven or more) in order to pay the cost of their passage. Finally and most important, if hardest for us to understand, race did not have the same meaning in 1619 that it has today. The first white settlers were organized around concepts of class, religon and nationality, and the apparently had little or no understanding of the concepts of race and slavery. It is certainly significant in this regard that English law in 1619 forbade the enslavement of babtized Christians. As an example, we might consider the first American court case relating to blacks. In November, 1624, a black man testified against a white man in a Virginia court. The court record notes: "John Phillip A negro Christened in England 12 years since. This case is especially instructive, not only because it defines the law of the time but also because it bears the directly to my next point. The names of most of the first black immigrants indicate that they been baptized in either in spain or on the coast of Africa. So the point I am making here is that the first black immigrants entered america as free man and woman temporarily bound to service. Jamestown blacks were bought by the colony with public provisions. They were therefore servants not of the individuals but of the state.
