1619 ? by Sasha Turner

The English were latecomers to the Americas. When the English finally arrived at the end of the 1500s, Spain was already transitioning from the genocidal forced labor of indigenous peoples to exploiting Africans in various degrees from Mexico and Peru, Hispaniola and Cuba, to Florida and the Carolinas. Africans worked as pearl divers and pilots and performed both skilled and menial labor in Spanish fields, factories, mines, and homes. They were also integral to Spain’s expeditions of conquest and military defense as captains and musketeers. Africans were both free and enslaved. The African presence in the Americas did not begin in Virginia in 1619, and their presence and interactions with Europeans, beginning with the Iberians, was defined by more than “possession and dispossession.” Economic transactions forced the 20 and odd from the Sao Joao Bautista, but all Africans were not yet reduced to slaves who would then be reduced to Blacks. The racialization of people of African descent and the legal codification of African enslavement remained in flux in 1619.

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1619? By Sasha Turner January 14, 2020 1 JMW Turner’s “The Slave Ship,” 1840 We are living in a “memory boom” he says. From Charleston to New York, the national mall and university halls, on land and at sea, we’ve been busy. Taking down and putting up. And taking down and putting up. Aga...

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