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.