
Where the Landing of the First Africans in English North America Really Fits in the History of Slavery
It was in 1619, "about the latter end of August," that an English privateer ship reached Point Comfort on the Virginia peninsula—and changed history
excerpt:
For example, as historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. has pointed out, Juan Garrido became the first documented black person to arrive in what would become the U.S. when he accompanied Juan Ponce de León in search of the Fountain of Youth in 1513, and they ended up in present-day Florida, around St. Augustine.
Nor is it the case that those who arrived in 1619 were the first enslaved people in what would become the United States. In 1565, for example, the Spanish brought enslaved Africans to present-day St. Augustine, Fla., the first European settlement in what’s now the continental U.S. In 1526, a Spanish expedition to present-day South Carolina was thwarted when the enslaved Africans aboard resisted.