Today in history: August 20th, 2009161665438+August 20th, 2009, the first seed of the American/African slave trade was planted. Although "more than 20" Africans on the "Man of War" were not treated as slaves, because slavery was not practiced in the New World at that time; But people know little about their status. It is believed that they may be indentured servants, and the contract stipulates to work for a certain period of time (usually seven years). After that, they will be given the same rights as other settlers, and sometimes they will get land and/or money for their previous work to help them settle down in their new life. If there is any choice in this matter, as most historians believe, the captain ordered the crew of the Dutch ship to steal them from a Portuguese slave ship sailing from Luanda, a port city in West Africa. When Dutch adventurers went bankrupt in Jamestown, they traded Africans and colonists for food.

Luanda and Angola are unique among other towns in Africa. Angola has recently become a Portuguese colony. If these Africans are from Luanda, they may have been dealing with Europeans for many years, and they may share a language and even be christianized.

The record of their position in Jamestown after their arrival is puzzling. From 1623 to 1624, Africans were classified as servants, but unlike whites, the year when they were enslaved was not mentioned. 1654 Slavery began to sneak into Virginia. When a former indentured servant was brought to the United States from Africa against his will (1620), he was allowed to use the court in Virginia to make one of his indentured servants a slave forever. His lawsuit against the servant who sought freedom after completing the agreed service years was successful, and the indentured servant became the first legal slave in the United States. Read more: The first legal slave owner in America was a black man.

At this time, the colony was very eager for field workers. At first, they looked to the motherland to help fill the vacancy, but a plague reduced the number of available workers, and the London fire provided a lot of job opportunities for survivors.

Any attempt to force Native Americans to obey their orders on a large scale is a complete failure, because the locals know the terrain better than the settlers and can easily avoid the steps of slavery, or when they are enslaved, it is not so difficult for those from the old world to escape.

Therefore, out of economic "needs", the colonies began the slave trade, which has spread in Europe for quite a long time. In less than a century, Africans in their twenties came to Jamestown and took root as slaves in the colony. Then the enslaved people were almost all African in origin, instead of being mixed together as they were at the beginning. The rest is history.

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20 interesting Dr. Martin Luther King. In fact, it was not until 1995 that Mississippi officially declared slavery illegal. Jackie Robinson is not the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball. The first African-American invited to the White House for dinner was an African slave who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia for reference.