“Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries; separating housbands (sic) from their wives and children.” – Germantown meeting
It was on this date in 1619 that 20 Africans arrive at Hampton, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship. They were the first Africans on record to be forcibly settled as involuntary laborers in the North American British Colonies.
Africans came ashore at Point Comfort, present day Fort Monroe in Hampton, VA. President Barack Obama declared Fort Monroe a National Monument in 2011 in part because he said that is where the first Africans came ashore in North America.
The slave trade began in the mid 1400’s and what we now know as South America. Brazil was the first country in the Americas to benefit from the slave trade initiated by Portugal. Slavery in the west moved up the South American coast through the Caribbean into what became Florida with few records kept before the Dutch cargo docked in Virginia.
Reference:
Black First:
2,000 years of extraordinary achievement
by Jessie Carney Smith
Copyright 1994 Visible Ink Press, Detroit, MI
ISBN 0-8103-9490-1
– National Museum of African American History and Culture
— from The Germantown Protest (against slavery).
image from AAREG.org
project1619
Board of Directors
We are a Grassroots organization whose members have been working for 25 years to get America and the World to know the true history about the arrival of the first Africans to land in Colonial America at Point Comfort, today’s Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, in August 1619.
Board Members
Calvin Pearson, President
Audrey Williams, Secretary
Dr. William Wiggins, History and Educational Director
Gary Kelly
Larry Gibson
Margaret Bristow
Melinda Steele
Rivers Taylor
Jannie Evans
Past Board Members
Willis Evans – deceased
Hugh Harrell III – deceased
National Advisory Board Members
Venita Benitez, Founder, National Freedom Day, Dallas, Texas
Prof. Robert Watson, Professor, Hampton University
Kathryn Knight, Book Author, Historian, Genealogist, Florida
Mr. Andrew Williams, Jr., President, Five Point Foundation Inc., Los Angeles, California
Affiliated Organizations
Weyanoke Red Black
National Juneteenth Observance Foundation
Hampton Contraband Historical Society
The City of Hampton
ASALH
National Freedom Day
Kinfolkdetective.com AAHGS