I wanted people to know the date 1619 and to contemplate what it means that slavery predates nearly every other institution in the United States. -- Nikole Hannah Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
What else hadn't we been taught? -- Nikole Hannah Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
The most common narrative in American schools and the popular culture today is that slavery began in America in 1619. Unfortunately, there is about as much truth in that scenario as there was in the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” argument related to the death of Michael Brown of 2014. Nikole Hannah-Jones and other advocates of Critical Race Theory prove beyond doubt the accuracy of Arthur Schlesinger’s maxim that "history is a weapon." They distort the historical narrative by omitting key facts that, if told, would present an entirely different view of the past.
The events leading up to the arrival of Africans at Jamestown in 1619 seem to be well agreed upon today. They were captured in Angola, Africa and sold by Africans to Portuguese slavers based in Luanda. While being transported on the San Juan Batista to the Spanish port of Vera Cruz, Mexico, the ship was captured by two English corsairs, the White Lion—flying a Dutch flag-- and the Treasurer off the Mexican coast. The English raiders removed some of the slaves who were then brought to Jamestown. Here, the White Lion exchanged “some twenty odd” Africans for "victualls" in August 1619.[1] That colony—in desperate need of laborers and resorting to indentured servitude—gladly accepted them. Here the agreement stops.
The status of these Africans will probably never be resolved. Nikole Hannah-Jones argues they were all reduced to slavery. Others argue that the Africans were given the same status as white indentured servants. The latter argue the word "servant" and not "slave" was used to describe them in Virginia’s first census of 1620. That accounting “recorded 32 Africans, 17 female and 15 male, all probably from the White Lion and Treasurer. None of the Africans are identified by name in this census . . . In 1620, there were 32 Africans in Virginia, making up about 3% of Virginia’s non-native population; by 1625, there were around 25 Africans, or about 2%.”[2] The decline in the number of Africans in 1625 may be attributed to the high mortality rate of all settlers in the marshy area where Virginia’s earliest English settlements were located or as part of the 350 setters killed in the uprising of Native Americans there in 1622.
What complicates matters is that indentured servants sometimes referred to themselves as slaves. Certainly, not all white indentured servants came here willingly. Over 52,000 convicts were saved from the gallows in England by being sent as indentured servants to America. Hundreds of children were seized from England’s streets and shuffled off to the colonies by English authorities. Kidnapping children, or ‘spiriting’ as it was called, was another common fate that befell many youth from the British Isles. Of 100 children transferred to Jamestown in 1619 and others sent the next year, only 12 were still alive for the census taken in 1625. (3] Often, the line between slave and indentured servant was blurred.
The status of the Africans is also unclear because after the Virginia census of 1625 we lose sight of them after that date. In putting forth the claim that the Africans who arrived in 1619 were life-long slaves it becomes necessary to generalize events and omit key facts. For example, President Obama’s 2011 proclamation of their landing in Virginia states, "the first enslaved Africans in England's colonies in America were brought to this peninsula on a ship flying a Dutch flag in 1619, beginning a long ignoble period of slavery in the colonies, and later, this Nation."[3]
Unfortunately, that's not the entire story. The words “probably,” “may,” and “likely,” are freely used to support the argument that the enslavement of Africans in British America began in 1619. The Africans were indeed slaves when they arrived in Virginia. And they undoubtedly would have continued to remain slaves had they reached their intended destination in Mexico. What the historical record in Virginia does show is that the small group of Africans was repeatedly referred to as “servants” in the annual censuses of 1620, 1624 & 1625. Moreover, several of them later appear as free persons. For this to happen, they undoubtedly had to have been accorded the status of indentured servants. Anthony Johnson—one of the earliest Africans to arrive there—began his life in Virginia as an indentured servant who gained his freedom and eventually became the owner of 250 acres of land through the headright system. His African wife, Mary, arrived in Virginia on the Margarett and John in 1622 or 1623 and is reported as living with Anthony in 1625. They were both free before 1645 and “became comparatively prosperous landowners” on Virginia’s eastern shore. In February 1653, Johnson’s home and some outbuildings were consumed by fire and he received public assistance from the colony because of his “hard labor and known service.” There’s more.
Two years later, when he and his family had again attained a modicum of prosperity, he successfully sued a prominent planter who he accused of illegally confiscating some of his livestock. Then in 1654, an incident took place that proved that Johnson, a black man, not only owned another member of his race, but was able to keep him in bondage for the rest of his life. The man in question was a “Negro called John Casor,'' who convinced a white neighbor that he was an indentured servant who should have been freed at the expiration of his tenure. Believing Casor, the man took him home to work in his own tobacco fields . . . In the end, the justices decided that Casor ``shall forthwith be returned unto the service of his master Anthony Johnson.'[4]
It’s ironic that the Anthony/Casor suit is cited as the first example of an African having to serve another for life—a free African enslaving another African—was something all too common in Anthony’s native Africa. The life of John Pedro provides another example of a free African man in early Virginia. In 1625 John is listed as living in the household of Francis West in the census of 1625 but he’s a free landowner in Lancaster, Virginia in the 1650s. We know of yet another free African man, John Phillip, because he testified in court in 1624. He is thought to have been“the only African to arrive in Virginia free.”[5]
Unfortunately, the scant records do not tell us much about the individual lives of the few dozen Africans that lived in the Virginia colony in its early years, but they were not slaves. Certainly, a person’s social class, religious affiliation, and gender accounted more than race for how he was treated in Virginia at the time. Some Africans gained free status and were able to successfully sue—not just once, but twice—more prominent white colonists. It’s true that by the 1660s the status of Africans was increasingly moving toward what would become a system of life-long slavery, but when viewed from the context of global events, this shuld hardly seem surprising.
English civilians had long been at risk of enslavement themselves by Africans—as the white aristocrats in charge of the early Virginia colony were fully aware. The coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland at this very time were targeted by Muslim slavers from North Africa. Since the Berber invasion of Spain and France in the early 700s AD, large Islamic armies had launched massive slave raids against Christian Europe. Unlike Europe, which sought precious spices from the East in the late Middle Ages, Muslim armies sought “white gold” in the form of slaves. Men were prized as galley slaves, eunuchs, and laborers who were worked to death in the quarries of North Africa. European women were prized as concubines. Even worse, from the early 1400s to 1700 AD, hundreds of thousands of white Christian boys and girls were seized by the Ottoman Empire in a form of “child tax” called devshirma. These children were separated from their families, forced to convert, subjected to life-long slavery, and often used to further subjugate Christian Europe.
It should be remembered the early English explorer of Virginia, John Smith, was a soldier of fortune whose military experience fighting the Ottomans helped the colony to survive. In August 1625—the very year the Virginia census listed 25 Africans living there--Muslim slavers from Africa seized over 60 English residents who sought refuge in a church in Cornwall, England. On the 12th of that month the mayor of Plymouth pleaded with the Privy Council in London that in just 10 days “27 ships had been taken and all the men on board, over 200 of them--had been made slaves.” African slave raiders seized 36 more ships from England, Scotland and Ireland in just the month of March 1636. In 1631 African slavers seized 109 prized captives—89 women and children and 20 men-- from Baltimore, Ireland, selling them into slavery in Algiers. From Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel of the Irish Sea, Muslim slavers established a permanent base and sailed 3,000 miles on two occasions to Iceland to capture almost 400 white slaves in June and July, 1627. Over 36 innocent people were killed, some being burned alive as the North Africans burned their homes and church. All of the captives were sold as slaves in North Africa.[6]
African based slavers even attacked the Faroe Islands, far to the north of Scotland in 1629 as they continued to ravage helpless towns all over coastal Europe. One Icelandic historian writes:
They [North African Muslims] ravaged other coasts, like the Faroe Islands in 1629, leaving 300 dead in their wake, and Ireland in 1631, as well as towns all over the Mediterranean and western coasts of Spain, England and France. By the 1650s, there were 30,000 prisoners from coastal lands all over Europe in Algiers alone. …As one of the hapless 400 Guoriour [a Christian Icelandic woman] spent nine years in what’s now Algiers before the Danish government finally came up with ransom money for 35 Icelanders, eight Norwegians and seven Danes. The other captives had either died, were made slaves on the galley ships or were sent to harems. …She was ransomed in June 1636 but had to leave her son behind in Algiers. Children of captives were forced to convert to Islam, and by doing so, lost all right to return…during the three centuries or so that Barbary corsairs hunted the seas.[7]
Ben Johnson, in “Barbary Pirates and English Slaves,” succinctly summarizes the English world of the early seventeenth century: “For over 300 years, the coastlines of the south west of England were at the mercy of Barbary pirates (corsairs) from the coast of North Africa.” In 1626 “It was feared that there were around 60 Barbary men-of-war prowling the Devon and Cornish coasts and attacks were now occurring almost daily.”[8] Things would not improve for white residents of England. "Between 1677 and 1680 the English [alone] were losing 3,000 people to Muslim slavers per year, highlighting a problem that had not abated for the entirety of the century."[9]
Indeed, more white Englishmen and women were seized and taken as slaves to North Africa in the first half of the seventeenth century than Black West Africans were taken to America at the time. This fact could not have escaped the consciousness of English authorities in that colony as it codified laws pertaining to racial slavery in 1662.
Nor were the English unfamiliar with events in eastern Europe. While the coastline of western Europe lay bare to Islamic African slavers for three centuries, Ottoman slave raids from the Crimean Khanate enslaved an estimated 2 million people over several hundred years. These white Christian slaves were sold in Istanbul, in Egypt and in North African port cities. "Crimean Tartars invaded Slavic lands 38 times between 1654 and 1657; 52,000 people were seized by the Tartars in the spring of 1655 in the course of a raid into the territory of Ukraine and Southern Russia.[10] In a single massive raid in 1769, over 20,000 Slavs were seized and sold as slaves.[11]
To ignore these historical facts serves only to “weaponize” history. In taking the long view of slavery in America, it’s worth remembering that very few of the transatlantic slaves from Africa ever arrived in North America. African-American historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. states that—"of the 10.7 million who disembarked in the New World— only 450,000 African slaves were ever brought to North America."[12] Africans from the Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, on the hand, are estimated to have enslaved 1.25 to 1.5 million white Europeans. These figures do not account for millions more Europeans captured and taken to Morocco, Istanbul, and Egypt over hundred of years. Just as the facts surrounding the exact nature of the status of those few dozen Africans who disembarked in Virginia from 1610 to 1650 remain unclear, so the total number of Europeans who suffered enslavement by people of color remains hazy.
What is clear is that there has been a deliberate omission of the historical record in American schools regarding the subject of global slavery and how it influenced the thinking of early English colonists in North America. Nor are many Americans aware that in its first 100 years as a nation, the U.S. fought three anti-slavery wars—two to free white slaves and one to free blacks.
What has been the result of this deliberate distortion of our nation’s past? National division. Increased racial tension and hate crimes, emanating from a false narrative. A lack of patriotism in our younger generation that has not been told the truth. New forms of discrimination and racial segregation now aimed against those who supposedly enjoy the benefits of ‘white privilege.’ Increased social upheaval within our once grand major cities. A collapse of our educational system. A weakened military. Increased tribalism all across the nation.
This has been the toll of the false narrative. Literally, the survival of our nation is at stake.
How do we correct the problem? Simple.
We begin by demanding a return to the honest teaching of American history.
ENDNOTES
[1] Waxman, Olivia B. “The First Africans Landed in Virginia in 1619. It Was a Turning Point for Slavery in American History—But Not the Beginning,” Time, August 20, 2019. Accessed HERE on December 5, 2022.
[2] Austin, Beth. “1619: Virginia’s First Africans,” Hampton History Institute (2019). Accessed HERE on December 5, 2022. (https://hampton.gov/DocumentCenter/View/24075/1619-Virginias-First-Africans?bidId=)
[3] Waxman.
[4] “Ambitious Slave-Turned-Slaveowner Enjoys Farm Success,” The Virginian Pilot (August 21, 1994). Accessed HERE on December 6, 2022. [https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1994/vp940821/08190821.htm ]
[5] Waxman
[6] Webb, Simon. “The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slavery of Islam,” (Pen & Sword Books, Philadelphia 2020), pages 70-73.
[7] Duin, Julia. “Iceland’s Best Selling Book on the Woman Who Escaped Pirates,” Religion Unpluggd, January 9, 2020. Accessed HERE, December 4, 2020. [https://religionunplugged.com/news/2020/1/9/icelandic-author-searching-for-english-publisher-for-best-selling-book-on-muslim-pirate-abductions ]
[8] Johnson, Ben. “Barbary Pirates and English Slaves,” Historic UK, Accessed HERE, December 2,
2022. [https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Barbary-Pirates-English-Slaves/ ]
[9] “The Surprising Tale of the Muslim Pirates that Raided from Rome to Reykjavik,” Exploring
History, Accessed HERE, on December 4, 2022. [https://medium.com/exploring-history/the-surprising-tale-of-themuslim-pirates-that-raided-from-rome-to-reykjav%C3%ADk-b63bd417c27 ]
[10] Kizilov, Mikhail. “Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea from the Perspective of Christian,
Muslim, and Jewish Sources,” Journal of Early Modern History (2007). (Available HERE).
[11] Wikipedia: "Slavic Slaves." Acessed HERE on December 5, 2022,
[12] Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “How Many Africans Were Really Taken to the U.S. During the SlaveTrade?” America’s Black Holocaust Museum, (January 6, 2014). Accessed HERE on December 5, 2022.
To download a PDF version of this article click "HERE."
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Jack Bovee
Fort Myers, FL
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.
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