The Story of 1619

 

In August of 1619, 20 plus enslaved Africans arrive at Point Comfort in the British Colony of Virginia and are sold to colonists. They are believed to be people of the Kingdom of Ndongo in present day Angola.

Although free and enslaved Africans are recorded in the Americas as early as the 1400’s — and, in what is now the U.S., in the 1500’s — the subjugation of these people is a critical point in the origin story of slavery in America. 

Chattel slavery — racialized and perpetual — ensued for 250 years certifying what followed: the black codes, Jim Crow laws, segregation, mass incarceration, punitive policing, systemic racism, and prosecutorial and judicial abuse. 

In the process 1619 becomes a symbolic beginning to the evolution of African American contribution, achievement, identity, and sacrifice.