First Africans in Virginia

Common card · No. 260244

The first Africans in Virginia were a group of "twenty and odd" captive persons, from the Mbundu ethnic group in modern-day Angola, who landed in the Colony of Virginia at Old Point Comfort in Hampton, Virginia in late August 1619 after their 11-week journey. Their arrival is seen as a beginning of the history of slavery in Virginia and British colonies in North America, although they were not in chattel slavery as it would develop in the United States, but were sold as indentured servants and had mostly worked off their indentures and were free by 1630. 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 for African American history, given that they were the first such group in mainland English America. They were sold to the governor of Virginia by Captain John Colyn Jope, the commander of the White Lion, who attacked and plundered them from the slave ship São João Baptista, which was carrying...

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