Page 117 - 1619 Project Curriculum

4 SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2019
Anything to
get them to the

new world The 1619 Project

Sometime in 1619,

a Portuguese

slave ship, the

São João Bautista,

traveled across

the Atlantic Ocean

with a hull filled

with human cargo:

captive Africans

from Angola,

in southwestern

Curated by Mary Elliott

All text by Mary Elliott and

Jazmine Hughes

Africa. The men, women and children, most likely from the kingdoms of Ndongo and people across the Mediterranean for centuries — but enslavement had not been
and Kongo, endured the horrific journey, bound for a life of enslavement in Mexico. based on race. The trans-Atlantic slave trade, which began as early as the 15th century,
Almost half the captives had died by the time the ship was seized by two English pirate introduced a system of slavery that was commercialized, racialized and inherited.
ships; the remaining Africans were taken to Point Comfort, a port near Jamestown, Enslaved people were seen not as people at all but as commodities to be bought, sold
the capital of the British colony of Virginia, which the Virginia Company of London and exploited. Though people of African descent — free and enslaved — were present in
had established 12 years earlier. The colonist John Rolfe wrote to Sir Edwin Sandys, North America as early as the 1500s, the sale of the ‘‘20 and odd’’ African people set the
of the Virginia Company, that in August 1619, a ‘‘Dutch man of war’’ arrived in the course for what would become slavery in the United States.
colony and ‘‘brought not anything but 20 and odd Negroes, which the governor and
cape merchant bought for victuals.’’ The Africans were most likely put to work in the MARY ELLIOTT is curator of American slavery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
tobacco fields that had recently been established in the area. African American History and Culture, where she co-curated the ‘‘Slavery and Freedom’’
Forced labor was not uncommon — Africans and Europeans had been trading goods exhibition. JAZMINE HUGHES is a writer and editor at The New York Times Magazine.