Four hundred years ago, in 1619 at about this time in August, the course of history in America was changed forever:
It is said that the ship came in out of a raging storm to land at Point Comfort in what is now Hampton, Virginia, just downriver from the English settlement at Jamestown. No one thought to record the date, except that it was in late August of 1619 — 400 years ago.
George Washington would not be born until 1732. The Mayflower would not bring the Pilgrims to North America until the following year.
The vessel that landed that day was an English ship called the White Lion and she carried cargo taken in an attack upon a Spanish ship in the Gulf of Mexico. Arriving in Virginia, the captain agreed to trade his stolen goods for “victuals.”
It may have been the most portentous bargain ever struck.
Because the White Lion brought rhythm and blues to America. It brought B-Boy swagger, Jesus moans, stormy Monday and melancholy trumpet solos that seemed to stretch for Miles. It brought uh huh and uh uh and mmm hmm and okra and banjo and bongo and juke and jive and what is hip. It brought the color purple and the bluest eye, brought Porgy and Bess and Jesse B Semple, brought the invisible man and ain’t I a woman, too. It brought nightmares and an incandescent dream.
In other words, it brought black people — “20 and odd Negroes” kidnapped from Angola and rechristened with European names: Antoney, Isabela, William, Angela, Frances, Margaret, John, Edward and more. They were hardly the first Africans in the so-called New World. African explorers had traipsed these shores for at least a century — far longer, by some reckonings.
But though they weren’t the first Africans in America, they were the first forced into indentured servitude, the system that became slavery. A few years later, Antoney and Isabella had a child they named William Tucker, after their white master. He was the first black child born in America. He is where African-American history begins.
This is just the beginning of a superb essay by the Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts, Jr., who goes on to explore where we are and where go from here, with additional thoughts from some friends.
America's "original sin" of enslaving Africans has also been explored by The New York Times Magazine in "The 1619 Project," a series of essays that has engendered censure by the usual paladins of white privilege (think "Heil" Hannity and Professor Newt Gingrich) because it doesn't paper over the serious flaws built into our "democracy" in the name of white supremacy and is, they believe, is an attack on (wait for it) Donald Trump. Revealing. Not surprising. (Denise Oliver Velez has a comprehensive collection of reactions to "The 1619 Project.")
Here's what Kevin Powell thinks the 400th anniversary requires of us:
(Image: painting of the first Afreicans landing in Virginia, August 1619/ National Park Service)
Here's what Kevin Powell thinks the 400th anniversary requires of us:
... What we need in America is a steady gaze in the mirror, accepting that inseparable of any talk about history, about democracy, from 1619 to the Civil War to Dr. King to Black Lives Matter, is the story of those who were brought here as slaves, and how that painful legacy of White supremacist thinking and behavior remains a nasty open sore on the American democracy.Given the reactions cited above, that nasty, open sore on American democracy isn't healing. In fact, the infection is being encouraged and stimulated.
(Image: painting of the first Afreicans landing in Virginia, August 1619/ National Park Service)
