On August 25, remembering the ‘20 and odd’ Africans who arrived in Virginia in 1619
TheGrio...
More than four centuries later, the legacy of those first Africans extends far beyond slavery into the culture, struggles and identity of Black America, and America, as a whole.
August 25 marks the anniversary of the 1619 arrival of the first documented group of enslaved Africans at Point Comfort, Virginia, in what was then an English colony. The arrival of the “20 and odd” Africans became a defining moment in the development of slavery in English North America and, over centuries, profoundly shaped African American history, culture and the United States itself.
On August 25, 1619, a group of Africans arrived at Point Comfort, near present-day Hampton, Virginia. They had been captured from a Spanish slave ship after being forcibly taken from Central Africa. They were then brought to the English colony aboard the White Lion, where they were traded for provisions.
The National Park Service identifies the 1619 landing as the first documented arrival of enslaved Africans in English-occupied North America, as reported by The North East Times. That distinction matters. Africans had already been brought to other parts of the Americas, including areas that are now part of the United States, by Spanish colonizers.
What followed in Virginia was not yet the fully codified system of racial chattel slavery that would emerge over the following decades. The legal status of the Africans who arrived in 1619 was initially uncertain, but systems of servitude increasingly hardened into hereditary, lifelong enslavement based on race.
The people who arrived in 1619 were not simply victims of a historical system. They were people with their own families, languages, cultures, skills and identities. The National Park Service notes that the Africans brought expertise in farming, herding, blacksmithing and other trades, while also contributing cultural traditions that would become part of the fabric of American life.
August 25 is a moment to remember the people who were forcibly brought to these shores, but also to recognize everything that followed. In 2019, the 400th anniversary was marked by a nationwide remembrance and bell-ringing ceremony intended to honor four centuries of African American history.
In Philadelphia, this year’s annual Slavery Commiseration at the President’s House site is one such remembrance. The gathering is particularly significant because the historic site has recently been at the center of a dispute over how the history of slavery should be presented to the public.