On or about August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped
by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony of Virginia and
were then bought by English colonists.
The exact date is not definitively known (a letter from the time
identified the ship’s arrival coming in "the latter part of August"),
but this date has been chosen by many to mark the arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World—beginning two and a half
centuries of slavery in North America.
In the end, 246 brutal years of slavery had an incalculable effect
on American society. It would take another century after the Civil
War for racial segregation to be declared unconstitutional, but the
end of state-sanctioned racism was by no means the end of racism
and discrimination in America.
