With much fanfare, the New York Times launched “The 1619 Project”, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first 20 enslaved Africans in Jamestown colony. The Times misleadingly announced: “Though America did not even exist yet, their arrival marked its foundation, the beginning of the system of slavery on which the country was built.”
This sentence constitutes a dangerous lie, because the new colony in Virginia hardly marked “the beginning of the system of slavery” but rather the continuation of an ancient, universal system that flourished in some form, everywhere, in 1619.
What made America unique wasn’t slavery, but the freedom and opportunity offered to most New World arrivals resulting, within 150 years, in higher living standards, and more widespread liberty, than anywhere on earth. Recalling slavery’s cruelty and evil is important, but without context those recollections become a profound distortion of our past.
No doubt the series does not mention the part Muslims played in the slave industry nor the ardent and ongoing support for slavery and racism provided by Democrats. It is nothing but an effort to stoke racial flames and fan them towards Republicans.
1619
Indentured servants of all colors came to the Americas.
Don’t let them lie about this, too.
Indentured servants first arrived in America in the decade following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607.
The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labor. The earliest settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for, but no one to care for it.
Passage to the Colonies was expensive.
Only the wealthy could afford to come on their own dime.
Indentured servants became vital to the colonial economy.
The timing was ideal. The Thirty Year’s War had left Europe’s economy depressed, and many laborers were without work.
A new life in the New World offered a glimmer of hope; this explains how one-half to two-thirds of the immigrants who came to the American colonies arrived as indentured servants.
Servants typically worked four to seven years in exchange for passage, room, board, lodging and freedom.
In 1619 the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, and given the same opportunities for freedom dues as whites.
However, slave laws were later passed in Virginia in 1661.
That’s really when “slavery” in the Americas began.
@Nan G:
In 1621, an black Angolan, Anthony Johnson, was sold as an indentured servant by Arab slave traders. He obtained his freedom in 1635, obtained land and became quite wealthy. Johnson then, in the 1640’s, purchased an indentured servant, John Casor. Casor had worked for Johnson for 7 plus years when Casor decided to work for a free white believing his indenture to Johnson has been served. Johnson sued Casor in a Virginia court claiming Casor was his for life and in 1655, the Court decided that Casor was indentured to Johnson for life, making Casor the first “slave.” The 1655 law suit was the precursor for Virginia slave laws.
Prior to the import of slaves to the Colonies, who were captured mostly by Arab slave traders at that time, Native Americans were exported as slaves to the Caribbean. No one ever mentions that.