A ship brings the first captive Africans,…
August 1619 CE
A ship brings the first captive Africans, stolen from the cargo of a Spanish vessel on the high seas, to what will later be called America, some days after Virginia’s House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in America, had convened at Jamestown on July 30, 1619.
The ship's captain, reportedly named Jope, trades for food and supplies these Africans as temporary indentured servants, in the same way that English whites are owned as laborers in the New World.
Because the Spanish had Christianized these Africans, this labor arrangement is for a specified time after which they are free to live their lives, just as the English laborers upon their release. (The actual enslavement of Africans in America will first be implemented intentionally in 1640, with the sentencing of John Punch.)