[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":113},["ShallowReactive",2],{"episode-1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia":3},{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":8,"tags":13,"thumb":20,"excerpt":26,"content":27,"transcript":28,"transcript_file":28,"audio":29,"resources":33,"segments":38},2,"1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia","1619: The Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia","",{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":12},1566566290,"08.23.19","Aug 23, 2019","August 23, 2019",[14,15,16,17,18,19],"1619","English colonists","Virginia","public history","slave trade (transatlantic)","slavery",{"src":21,"caption":22,"derivatives":23},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Fimages\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002Fwebsite-Jamestown1619.jpg","\"Landing Negroes at Jamestown from Dutch man-of-war, 1619,\" illustration in Harper's Weekly Magazine, January 1901. Source: Library of Congress",{"square_small":24,"square_medium":25},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Fimages\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002Fsquare_small\u002Fwebsite-Jamestown1619.jpg","https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Fimages\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002Fsquare_medium\u002Fwebsite-Jamestown1619.jpg","On this episode of BackStory, Ed, Nathan and Joanne dig into the complicated history of 1619 and the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to the English colonies. ","\u003Cp>This month marks the 400th anniversary of the first Africans’ arrival at what would become British North America. It wasn’t the first time Africans set foot in what became the United States – they’d arrived some 100 years earlier with Spanish colonists. But 1619 looms large in American history because it marks the beginning of slavery’s development in the Virginia colony and later the entire nation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This episode and related resources are funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.\u003C\u002Fp>\n",null,{"url":30,"duration":31,"formatted_duration":32},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fepisodes\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia.mp3","3523","00:58:43",[34],{"title":35,"content":36,"files":37},"1619 Lesson Set","\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Ffiles\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002Fresources-inline\u002F1619-The-Arrival-of-the-First-Africans-in-Virginia-Lesson-Set.pdf\">Download the lesson set\u003C\u002Fa>.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In 1619, the first Africans were brought against their will across the Atlantic Ocean to the Virginia colony. It marked the beginning of the institution of slavery in the Unites States. Over 400 years later, the United States is still grappling with the legacy of slavery and systemic racism. Generations of African Americans have been subject to untold cruelty. However, it is also true that much of America’s current prosperity can be traced back to the contributions of slaves.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This lesson, and the corresponding BackStory episode, provide a retrospective of the origins of the African slave trade in the U.S. The episode raises difficult questions about how we should commemorate the 400-year anniversary of this dark moment in American history. Using modern perspectives, students will form arguments on how to best approach the legacy of slavery in the United States.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.backstoryradio.org\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002Fsites\u002F13\u002F2019\u002F10\u002FNEH-Preferred-Seal820.jpg\">\u003Cimg src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Fimages\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002Finline\u002FNEH-Preferred-Seal820-300x136.jpg\" alt=\"\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",[],[39,56,72,88,103],{"index":40,"title":41,"description":42,"audio":43,"tags":47,"transcript":50,"episode":51},0,"History First, First History ","\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.americanevolution2019.com\u002Fabout\u002Fvolunteer-leadership\u002Fdr-cassandra-newby-alexander\u002F\">Cassandra Newby-Alexander\u003C\u002Fa>, a professor of history at Norfolk State University and project director for the 1619 Conference Series, tells Joanne about the complicated history behind the arrival of the first Africans and colonial Virginia.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Music:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"http:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FPodington_Bear\u002FBuilding\u002FTheFalls\">The Falls by Podington Bear\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":44,"duration":45,"formatted_duration":46},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia-01.mp3","1154","00:19:14",[14,48,16,49],"Colonial Era","enslaved Africans","\u003Cp>Speaker 1: Major funding for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Robert and Joseph Cornell Memorial Foundation.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory. Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Ed Ayers.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: I’m Joanne Freeman.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: And I’m Nathan Connolly. If you’re new the podcast, we’re all historians, and each week, along with our colleague Brian Balogh, we explore a topic of American history that’s been in the news.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: At the end of August 400 years ago, something monumental happened on the shores of Virginia: something that would change the course of American history. John Rolfe, a prominent planter, recorded details of the event. He described how an English ship called the White Lion arrived at Point Comfort, a site just outside the Jamestown colony. Rolfe recorded that the ship brought, quote, “20 and odd negros.” Rolfe’s entry marked the arrival of the first Africans on land that would become British North America.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: A couple of days later, another small group of Africans arrived aboard the Treasurer, another English privateering ship. The crew of the Treasure had stolen the Africans that were on board from a Portuguese slaving ship, the San Juan Batista.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: The Africans weren’t the first to set foot in America. Some 100 years earlier, Spanish colonists brought Africans to lands that would later become part of the United States. Still, the arrival marked the beginning of the long and tragic story of slavery in Virginia and in the English colonies. Today on the show, we’re exploring the complicated history behind 1619. We’ll travel to Hampton, Virginia, and meet a family whose roots go back to where it all began. You’ll hear from Frank Harris who interviewed people from all walks of life about their thoughts on the 400th anniversary.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: But first, we thought we’d start off with… surprise, surprise… a little history.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: The story of the arrival of the first Africans to British North America might seem relatively simple. It’s 1619 and a ship arrives in the Virginia colony, a ship that includes people forcibly taken from west Africa. “But hold on,” says Cassandra [Newbie 00:02:24] Alexander, a professor of history at Norfolk State University. It turns out the history of these first Africans’ arrival is anything but simple. I talked more with Cassandra about the history of 1619 and started by asking her what historians have discovered about the lives of these first arrivals.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: We know that these were people who had been free, who were living in urban areas in the kingdom of Ndongo. It’s in that kingdom, as well as the kingdom of the Kongo, that we would see a lot of understanding of the mixture of cultures coming into being in the lives of the people who lived in that region. What I mean by that is that the Portuguese were, of course, trying to dominate the area. They sent missionaries in. It’s at that point that many of the Africans who were living in the kingdom of Ndongo, who were Kimbundu-speaking peoples, that they learned Portuguese, that they learned to read, that they understood and learned about the religious canons of Catholicism that…\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: Of course, even though England separated from the Catholic church and create the Church of England, they followed a lot of these ideas: that you don’t enslave a fellow Christian, that there’s a certain order to society, that it’s supposed to be a society of laws. While their society was set up in a similar kind of way, they had a better understanding of these foreign people who were very different from them, at least as far as they could see.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: These first Africans came from that environment. They were not unaccustomed to Europeans. These Europeans were not foreign to them. What they had to do was to learn English, but because they came from a region in which people spoke many dialects and many languages, picking up English seemingly did not take a very long time, at least as far as we can see in the brief mention of things in the records. These first Africans who were forcibly taken to the Virginia colony, they had been free, and now they found themselves in chains and bondage. The debate still continues about whether or not they were enslaved, whether they were bonded, whether they were indentured servants… although most historians say of course they weren’t indentured servants because there was no contract. I fall in the camp of arguing that these people were bonded.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: Explain what you mean by bonded.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: In similar ways to Europeans who were forcefully taken and made to serve… In fact, there are records in England that talk about English people who were kidnapped and suddenly they found themselves on a ship bound for the Jamestown colony. At this time, you would see in the records the mention of Virginia, the Virginia colony, and Jamestown almost interchangeably. So these people didn’t have a contract, unlike indentured servants who signed a contract in exchange for their passage over, for food, or whatever; they would serve so many years and the average, they say, was seven years. But a person who was seized… and they were bonded servants… these individuals typically did not serve a lifetime of servitude, which was classified as anything over 20 years.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: It seems that these Africans were treated more as these bonded servants, although from the beginning we would see in the records that they were listed and referred to differently than any of the Europeans who were brought in.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: I want to come back to that because I want to go into that in more detail, but I want to sum up what sounds like what you just said. I think people tend to assume there are two clear categories: free and enslaved. What you’re suggesting here is it’s very complex in this period, and even, still, to this day hard to tell some of the differentiations: that there’s a lot of shadings.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: There are a lot of shadings. Because the records are so incomplete… and by incomplete, I mean that either there was no effort to record a lot, or over time a lot of the records simply were destroyed or lost. Because of that we see this homogenous term servant being used to apply to everyone who was not free. It would be in the court records when someone was freed or in your will; that’s when you see some of these specificities itemized.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: I want to highlight something here because I think… I’m sitting here as a historian and sort of thrilled and impressed at this level of detail that you need to go in to uncover these and decode and then piece together what you’re talking about here. I just want to highlight that for the people listening because what an incredible process that is still ongoing.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: Yes, and that’s what exciting. That’s what I tell my students: that this notion that history is in the past and everything we know we already know is untrue. There’s so much intrigue when you begin to really parse out, in this time period of the 1619 era, you begin to dive deep into the records that we have. It unfolds conspiracies; it unfolds all kinds of actions and activities going on, some of them known, some of them may never be known. In Hampton Roads, you have the beginnings of our nation. These people who were being forcibly brought in from west\u002Fcentral Africa, they brought, fully intact, their culture, their ideas, their skills. You had people who already knew tobacco production, and while it wouldn’t be until the middle 18th century that the African laborers would begin to dominate over the white laborers, they knew tobacco production and were very useful in that. Many of these Africans were accustomed to riverboat trading and riverboat transportation, as were the native peoples, while the English had more ocean-faring transportation because they located on an island.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: The Africans’ knowledge of riverboat navigation, transportation, was really important because they weren’t purchased as servants to lower, middle-class whites. They were purchased as servants to the elite in the colonies. These were the ones who would be constructing the boats, who were bringing in the goods, who were exporting the goods that were made here. They were in a position of influence, even though their numbers were very small, that kind of belie those small numbers; they had an influence beyond just how small of a number of they were compared to the larger white population.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: Of course, the way that we interpret this time period… Once Pocahontas dies, it’s almost as if all native peoples evaporate. We know that the English continued for the next 100 years surrounded by… even though they were starting to diminish because of warfare and disease… They were still surrounded by much larger, hostile native population.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: You’ve depicted this image, a wonderful image of these people who obviously are free, have their own culture, their own skills, are captured, are brought to North America, and then are deploying those skills in this new environment, as you put it, often to this elite population. Here’s my question: I understand that you… kind of along the lines of stressing their independence… you prefer to call these people un-free rather than enslaved. I wonder if you could explain what that means.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: Because Virginia did not have a legalized system of slavery, the first slave laws in Virginia would not be passed until 1662, though there were signs that slavery was emerging by the 1640s. I prefer not to focus on the system of slavery until we would actually see it emerging.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: It’s an institution.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: As an institution, but even as a practice, because you had a number of people who were obtaining their freedom, and they were obtaining their freedom in the first 20 years because they had finished 20 years of service. You would see this written in the documents. You have, for example, Anthony and Mary Johnson who were bonded on the Bennet Plantation in Virginia on the James River. After they served that 20 years they were given land through the head rights system: land on the eastern shore. Anthony Johnson prospered so much that he could have, if the general assembly did not change the laws… or, at that time they called it the House of Burgesses… he could have become the first black freeholder. But the moment that he had the requirements by law, the general assembly… or, I should say, the House of Burgesses… met and changed the law, saying that this only applies to white men.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: Which gets back to a point you made earlier about a series of laws being passed in Virginia that are setting in place a pattern that doesn’t exist at the outset.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: Yes. For example, in 1662, same year that there would be a clear law saying that all incoming Africans brought into the colony would be enslaved. That same year, this law said that black women’s children would take after the condition of their mother, while in that same law saying that for white women the children would continue to take after the status of their father, because England was a patriarchal and patrilineal society. But what America did, and what Virginia in particular did, was it changed that law for black people only.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: This was a way, also, to continue any sexual exploitation that happened to black women with impunity. White men could force themselves on these women or have children… just have children… with these women and not worry about growing the free black population, instead actually growing their wealth that way.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: So there’s a series of these laws. You mentioned the earlier one about the amount of wealth that you need to be able to vote. It sounds like bit by bit these are codifying slavery into becoming some kind of institutionalized, legalized system.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: Yes. I think there are two of the most heinous laws that were passed during this period: one in 1669 and the other in 1672. The first one allowed for the, quote, “Casual killing of black people by their owners.” In 1672, the law said that if any black person who was in bondage resisted arrest, that they could be killed with impunity. It set in motion what some legal experts have called a muscle memory. It set in motion a national way of regarding blacks before the law, and when it came to law enforcement in particular.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: Muscle memory is such a wonderful way of putting it because, obviously, one of the underlying assumptions there is that we’re talking about force, right?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: Yes.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: It’s a memory and a threat of a force. That’s a great phrase.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: And it does not require any conscious thought. It is just a natural reaction because it’s so embedded in the culture.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: You’ve given us this really wonderfully human, complex, shaded, in some ways amorphous or nebulous, image of the complexities of life for white and black and every other shade of person in this time period that… Again, as we said at the outset, I think it is so important to get people past the easy assumptions that they might bring to understanding this period from modern times.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: Related to that, I understand that you’re involved with the public events that are going to be commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans to Jamestown. Given everything that we’ve talked about here, what do you want people to come away with in learning about that history?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: I want people to know that our history, our narrative, is not written in stone. That much of what we’ve grown up learning is incorrect in terms of these early years. It wasn’t neat, and it certainly wasn’t cleaned up the way that we present it in terms of our national narrative. But most importantly, I want people to know that these were human beings. They weren’t things, they weren’t objects, they had hopes and dreams, and their hopes and dreams helped to transform the course that the Virginia colony was on.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cassandra: After 1619, the Virginia colony was never going to be what it started out in 1607, or even in 1616 when John Rolfe showed the colony that they could produce tobacco and that was a money-making crop for them. That from 1619 moving forward, we would see Africans helping to define the concepts of freedom and liberty and equality that went beyond the normal understanding that English people or Europeans in general had about that: that it only related to them, that only they could be Christians. These Africans were not complacent with their fight for that and their fight actually helped to evolve a very expansive understanding that has become our national moniker of freedom, liberty, and equality.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: Cassandra Newby-Alexander is a professor of history at Norfolk State University.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":52,"tags":53,"thumb":54},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":12},[14,15,16,17,18,19],{"src":21,"caption":22,"derivatives":55},{"square_small":24,"square_medium":25},{"index":57,"title":58,"description":59,"audio":60,"tags":64,"transcript":66,"episode":67},1,"Questioning the 400th","\u003Cp>Several years ago, Frank Harris set out on a project that took him around the country, interviewing dozens of people about the 400th anniversary of the first Africans to arrive in British North America. He asked them two simple, but important questions: How should the 400th be observed? And if you had the chance, what would you say to those first Africans?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For more information about this project, visit his website at \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.the400th.com\u002F\">https:\u002F\u002Fwww.the400th.com\u002F\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Music:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"http:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FPodington_Bear\u002FReflective\u002FBrownfield\">Brownfield by Podington Bear\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":61,"duration":62,"formatted_duration":63},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia-02.mp3","666","00:11:06",[14,48,16,65,49,17],"commemoration","\u003Cp>Nathan: Several years ago, Frank Harris began interviewing people around the country about the 400th anniversary of the first Africans to arrive in British North America. He asked them two simple, but important, questions: how should the 400th be observed, and if you had the chance, what would you say to those first Africans? The responses he got inspired him to write a poem called They Came Across the Water: Precious Black Cargo. Here’s an excerpt.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: They came across the water: precious black cargo\u002Fin the dungeon below, nameless, homeless, unremembered, unknown\u002FAfrican to African, dust to dust, greed and lust\u002Fforgotten adage, the first passage, village slaughter, the beginning of the horror.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Among the dozens of interviews he conducted, Frank says there was one response in particular that stuck out to him.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: When I was in Mississippi, I met this guy and I asked him about the 400th, and he ended the interview by saying, “They had a tough time coming across the water.” Those words stuck with me: “They had a tough time coming across the water.” This was aptly described in many things that Africans had gone through on the way here.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: Then I read the book by Zora Neale Hurston called The Last Black Cargo, in which she talks about… This is an interview she did back in the 30s with the person who was said to be the last enslaved African brought to America. The book really touched me because it talked about the experiences of this African as he left Africa, and he was old enough to remember what happened. He described what happened to him in his village.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: Those things kind of inspired me to write this poem, but for me it describes the challenge that descendants of enslaved Africans have experienced in this country from day one from Africa, and that we’re still experiencing today.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Right. You’ve been traveling around and asking people, personally, what do they think about the 400th, how it should be observed, if it at all. What motivates you to take on this project as a way of maybe accessing people’s everyday thoughts about the anniversary.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: Well, first of all I’m a journalist. I love history. I’ve always had a commitment to the interest of black people in this country. My parents were involved in civil rights; they were from Mississippi. And I love talking to people. I think everybody has a story. It’s interesting because I’ll walk up to strangers, as well as people I know, but… When you walk up to strangers, it’s really interesting. You would think that maybe they may not want to talk to you, but often times people will open up and tell you their stories and tell you their thoughts and feelings.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: First of all, most people were… and many still are… unaware of this event, so that was the first thing. Even in some speeches that I’ve given, some talks that I’ve given, I will say, “The 400th: what does it mean to you?” Maybe recently people will know, but no one knew what the 400th was, and I kind of expected that. When I tell them, it really strikes them, and sometimes the responses that people give… it’s very powerful. It floors them.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: When I ask the other question… not just how should this event be observed… I will ask them, “If you had the opportunity, what would you say to the first enslaved African? What would be your words to that person?” I’ve had people pause and gasp and try to really think about what they might say.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Give us a sense of the kind of responses that you’ve gotten to that and to other questions.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: I interviewed Erica Huggins. Erica Huggins is a former member of the Black Panther Party. She said two things that were striking. She said, “First of all, I may not know your name, but you are forever in my heart.” She also said, “It is my sacred duty to honor you for the rest of my life.”\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: One gentleman I interviewed in Harlem last fall… He was from Oklahoma. He and his wife were visiting Harlem. The words that he said were, “I’m sorry.” This was a black man. He said, “I’m sorry.” That’s what he would say to him. There’s a long pause and I said, “About…?” And he said, “For what you had to go through, and I’m sorry that we have not done enough in this country,” we meaning black people.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: I had one of my colleagues at Southern, Professor [Shavaun 00:25:21] Carter David… she asked him, “Are we what you imagined we would be?” She talks about how the first Africans would have no way of knowing what the future would bring or if they could envision themselves ever being free. So her question was, “Are we what you imagined we would be?”\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: There were a number of different responses and all of them were touching, were moving.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: It really does serve to capture the complexity of the black presence in the Americas more generally, which I have to imagine that there are a number of people who feel a personal connection to the history of African enslavement, who certainly feel a connection to the events of 1619, and who feel that in marking that event there is, in fact, much to celebrate in terms of the arrival of black people to the place where their citizenship would be recognized, to the point where they were able to put their families back together, to build institutions and the like. There’s a long way that people have come since that period.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: At the same time, I have to imagine that your understanding and your discussion with others about the 400th was a very solemn occasion, one that couldn’t necessarily be called a celebration but maybe something else. Did you get any sense of people appreciating that difference in your conversations with them?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: I always use the word observance. I didn’t say celebrate because… and this was some of things that some of the people interviewed said: “How do you celebrate your ancestors being enslaved?” There’s a number of different ways to look at that. One person said to me… it was Erica Huggins again. At the time I interviewed her it was Aretha Franklin’s funeral. When Aretha Franklin died, people were not celebrating her dying, they’re celebrating her living. In the same way, you’re not celebrating enslavement, you’re celebrating those who persevered, those who endured.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: There was another lady in Mississippi… she was a mayor at the time. It was in Sidon, Mississippi. She said, “We should celebrate. We’re not celebrating enslavement, we’re celebrating the fact that we survived, we’re a strong people, that we built this country and went through a whole lot to do so.”\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: In light of the people that you spoke, your own personal engagement with a lot of these issues and themes through journalism and just through living in this country, what do you think is the best way to observe the 400th anniversary and how does your own sense of meaning frame or shape how you think of how they should be observed?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: I’ve thought about that, and I don’t know if there is a one best way to observe it. Personally, for me, what I’m going to do… I’m in a New Haven area and we have an ocean. On Sunday morning there’s a call for people to toll a bell; I think the US park system, one of the things they’re encouraging people to do is on Sunday, on the 25th of August, to toll a bell for four minutes in honor of the 400th. So I’m going to go to the ocean and the beach and I’m going to toll a bell. I may say a few words and bring a few people with me. That will be part of my honor, my observance of the 400th. And I may do some other things in between now and then.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Frank: One of the things I’m doing is, again, trying to get the word out and trying to get people to recognize that this event occurred so that we don’t let this time pass without some type of commemoration, some type of observance, of those who came before us and helped build this country.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Frank Harris is a journalism professor at Southern Connecticut University. To learn more about this project, you’ll find a link on website at backstoryradio.org.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":68,"tags":69,"thumb":70},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":12},[14,15,16,17,18,19],{"src":21,"caption":22,"derivatives":71},{"square_small":24,"square_medium":25},{"index":4,"title":73,"description":74,"audio":75,"tags":79,"transcript":82,"episode":83},"First Family","\u003Cp>BackStory travels to Hampton, Virginia to meet with members of the Tucker family. Using oral history and official records, they’ve traced their lineage back to William Tucker, the first African-American born in British North America in 1624.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Music:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"http:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FPodington_Bear\u002FPensive_2\u002FFeldspar_1424\">Feldspar by Podington Bear\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cbr \u002F>\n\u003Ca href=\"http:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FPodington_Bear\u002FThoughtful\u002FLightTouch\">Light Touch by Podington Bear\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":76,"duration":77,"formatted_duration":78},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia-03.mp3","680","00:11:20",[14,80,48,16,81],"Afrifcan American genealogy","ancestry","\u003Cp>Nathan: As far as first families go in American history, there are plenty of amous ones. There’s John Rolfe and Pocahontas, John, Abigail, and John Quincy Adams… But you’ve probably never heard of the Tucker family from Hampton, Virginia. The arrival of the first Africans means something special for them. That’s because they’ve been to trace their lineage back to William Tucker, the first African American born on British North American soil in 1624. He was a child of Isabella and Antonio, two of the first Africans to arrive in 1619.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: BackStory producer Melissa Gismondi traveled to Hampton to chat with some member of the Tucker family.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Melissa: Excellent, thank you.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Speaker 8: This is Vincent. Vincent, this is Melissa Gismondi.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: How are you?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Melissa: Hi, nice to meet you.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: She met them on a leafy, two acre plot. There’s an air force base nearby and planes go by constantly. The plot is surrounded by homes. Walking up to it, it’s easy to think you’re strolling into someone’s backyard, but it’s actually a sacred site for the Tucker Family.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: We’re standing on the grounds of what was once called the old colored graveyard and it has been in the Tucker family for years.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: That’s Vincent Tucker. He’s the president of the William Tucker 1624 Society.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: We purchased it in 1896. It’s a beautiful two acre establishment and we did an x-ray radar scan several years ago that discovered 106 unmarked graves. There’s still an area that we have to complete. Then there are other standing graves that were here way before that time that also consists of our family members and others from the neighborhood.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Vincent says the family is still doing research to find out exactly how far the cemetery dates back, but they have some ideas.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: We do know that Bluebird Gap Farm, which is about a quarter of a mile from here, is where Captain William Tucker Plantation was. Descendants of William Tucker were there; this happened to be the only cemetery within that area, so we believe that it could possibly go back 400 years. He did own a lot of land in this community and we were thinking and through research we hope to prove that this cemetery was indeed part of that plantation.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Vincent was joined by some of his cousins: Verandal Tucker and Walter Jones. Melissa asked them if there’s a chance William Tucker’s remains lie in the family plot.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: That we don’t know. We don’t know for sure.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: Yes there is a chance.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: There’s a chance.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: But we don’t know.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: There’s been speculation but we don’t know for sure. There’s no concrete evidence of that.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: We have not gone in and… All of the white crosses that you see are where there were unmarked graves that we uncovered with the ground-penetrating radar. [crosstalk 00:33:58] possible graves.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: This is Walter. He’s part of the cemetery beautification committee.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: We don’t know and we haven’t done any studies to see what would be the oldest remains that’s out here, if that could be determined. But as my cousin said, it’s very possible it went back 400 years. We were very proud to find and uncover a lot of this history and be able to share it with the country.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: One of the historians that came out a couple years ago was able to share that Africans, when they were buried, they may not have had markers, and one thing that they did was they planted a seed for a tree at the location of where someone was buried. As you can see, this cemetery is spattered with trees everywhere, not to mention the ones that have fallen over and have uncovered different things.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Walter explained that one of those discoveries turned out to be quite extraordinary.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: So right now we’re walking to the edge of the cemetery where there were markers and you can see there’s a lot of crosses and a lot of indentgents where there are unmarked graves that we were able to uncover. As I mentioned, there were several trees that were planted where there was Africans buried, it’s believed. As you can see, the one with the cross there represents and area that I was clearing thinking I was doing the right thing, to clear certain areas to make it easier to clean.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: What we uncovered was the remains of a skull right on top of that mound almost. It’s believed that the roots and the trees that have came up pushed the body to the top. After finding that, we took it all to Richmond and had it evaluated to see the age and ethnic background, and it turned out to be an African American female approximately 60 years old. We dedicated this area and re-buried the remains there. We had a ceremony out here and several dignitaries came and everybody honored what we were doing and respected that.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: To mark the 400th anniversary, the Tuckers are holding a ceremony at the family plot, which is now protected from future development. For them, this anniversary is deeply personal. It’s also garnered the family international attention: the chance to tell people about their family and their family’s place in American history.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: I’d like to start off by saying that this is our birthplace. This is where we came 1619, and this is the cemetery that’s closest to Captain William Tucker’s property that we know of, and we feel like this cemetery is also the resting place for all of our ancestors. We need to understand and respect all of the contributions that our ancestors made. And, I’m sure there’s other [inaudible 00:38:08] as well.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: So do you mean the contributions of building America with our sweat and blood and tears?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: Yes, I do. [crosstalk 00:38:18]. And starting off here. Building the colonies that were getting started, and then over the years what we’ve done. This is the birthplace; this is the beginning. And the contributions have started right here. That’s significant to me.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: Right. Because with the arrival of the 1619, back then they didn’t have technology, so a lot of the things… the labor that they put into to it, and even with the thinking process, the entrepreneurship, how they were thinking to invent, because a lot of African Americans invented a lot of things, resources, that we use on a daily basis today. A lot of it has not been recognized like it should have been, but it all started from the arrivals. This is a gateway to let people know that this piece of history is a very significant piece of history that needs to recognized, and the truth needs to be told.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: It’s very real, you know, saying that it wasn’t recognized is very important. It’s never been compensated, and that’s something that should be considered going forward. Who’s going to help tell the story? Who’s going to help fund to tell the story? Who’s going to look even further towards reparations and other things to support and lift us, through the work of our ancestors, to a place where we can stand on even ground.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vernadal: And this American history that we’d like the country to know. This is not just about us, it’s American history they need to know, that wasn’t talked about in school, and now it needs to be reinforced or told. They need to put more emphasis on this piece of history, because it’s the beginning of the arrival. How significant can something like that be?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: As the stories are shared, and as we continue to do research into our family, there are a lot of branches to this tree, so to hear different stories of what happened to our family… bits and pieces… makes it real. It’s not just us. We’re all descendants from one family or one branch or anther. So to talk about those stories, to hear those stories, sometimes it will bring tears to your eyes because it’s not just a story that you read in the book: it’s your family and things that we endured over the years of slavery and those who were free and the labor that was put into building America. It’s a lot more there than chains and treated as savages or things of that nature. It’s deep.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Vincent: All of that goes through my mind when I think of others.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Walter: With [inaudible 00:41:28], not only did it inspire us to push through and clean and do the x-ray and to do our own research, but it’s inspiring all African Americans to look at their own roots and paths and find out the connections that are there and how much history they can uncover.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: That was Walter Jones, Verandal Tucker, and Vincent Tucker with BackStory producer Melissa Gismondi.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":84,"tags":85,"thumb":86},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":12},[14,15,16,17,18,19],{"src":21,"caption":22,"derivatives":87},{"square_small":24,"square_medium":25},{"index":89,"title":90,"description":91,"audio":92,"tags":96,"transcript":97,"episode":98},3,"Where it all began","\u003Cp>Ed talks to Terry Brown, superintendent at Fort Monroe National Monument in Norfolk, Virginia. It’s a site that includes Old Point Comfort, where historians believe the first Africans set foot on British North America.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Music:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"http:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FPodington_Bear\u002FReflective\u002FDramamine\">Dramamine by Podington Bear\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cbr \u002F>\n\u003Ca href=\"http:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FPodington_Bear\u002FEncouraging\u002FArboles\">Arboles by Podington Bear\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":93,"duration":94,"formatted_duration":95},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia\u002F1619-the-arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-virginia-04.mp3","892","00:14:52",[14,48,16,49],"\u003Cp>Ed: Terry Brown has a big job: protecting one of the most historic sites in America. Terry is the superintendent at Fort Monroe National Monument in Norfolk, Virginia. It’s a site that includes old Point Comfort, where historians believe the first Africans set foot in British North America. If you ask Terry, Fort Monroe isn’t just historical, it’s also breathtaking.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Terry: Oh my. It’s beautiful. I mean, if you come through the main gates of Fort Monroe, it looks and feels like a military base and it’s fascinating. You have all these old military buildings. As you drive down the main road, there’s these beautiful trees, these crepe myrtles that hug you as you drive down the road. You see plenty of ships going by. It’s a beautiful scene. At times, when I walk around the fort I’m taken aback by the view. The view shed is amazing.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: Terry stays busy at Fort Monroe giving tours to thousands of people who visit the site each year. Fortunately, I was able to catch up with him recently and ask what it was like to introduce so many people to such an important space. I started by asking Terry to tell me about the stories of Fort Monroe and what he tells visitors about the site’s significance.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Terry: I think it’s so easy to come to Point Comfort. It’s so beautiful. Like I said earlier, you can come to this fort, you can enjoy the… The military was here for 190 years, so you have these historic buildings. You have the beach. We have a light house that dates back to 1802. But when you scratch the surface and look at the history, American Indians were fishing and canoeing in the Chesapeake almost 15,000 years ago. You can make it a national monument just on that story alone. Then you have the early colonists arriving: Captain John Smith and Christopher Newport. The first Africans. We have the largest stone fort in America and it was built in part by enslaved people. It’s just a beautiful piece of resource that we have here.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Terry: And then in 1861, May 1861, we have this amazing story that sometimes gets pushed to the side because we’ve been focused on 1619, but in 1861 Virginia… right at the start of the war… Virginia succeeds from the Union. Not even a week or two after it leaves the Union, these three enslaved men arrive at the gates of Fort Monroe… Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Shepard Mallory… and they ask for asylum. Why this is so important is because about a week before they arrive we know that several enslaved people were returned to the Confederates. The Confederates were building fortifications across the waters. Then, in May 24th… sometime in that time frame… these three men show up at the gate, they ask for asylum, and General Butler, who had just arrived… was sort of a thorn in Lincoln’s side, he was just trying to find a place to put him, and he lands at Fort Monroe. He makes the decision to keep these gentlemen.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Terry: To make a long story short, before we know it, there are people showing up the next day. By Monday, almost 100 people were showing up. By October, we’re talking thousands, and eventually 10,000 plus enslaved people would make their way to Fort Monroe. Over time, they would call it Freedom’s Fortress. And you have all these contraband camps literally on the parade ground here at Point Comfort. It’s just an amazing story, and that will lead to many different policy changes and ultimately the Emancipation Proclamation.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: Those are two powerful on the same, quite small, piece of territory. How do you bring those together, Terry? I know you have to tell those stories every day. How do you relate them?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Terry: I think the arc of history is important. It’s not like you come in I can show you some artifacts or the footprints of Africans being in this space. The artful part of being in this position, I have to artfully tell people that they were here and that they were relevant. And to convince people that this is important, especially when you don’t have too many things that you can show them. But what I try to convey to folks is that it’s not just an African American story, it’s really an American story, and we need to merge all these stories into one. Let’s not be afraid to have these conversations about slavery and racism.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Terry: I mean, my office is the former home of Robert E. Lee. I think he’s important to talk about. Jefferson Davis was imprisoned here. All of these stories are really complicated. I like to tell people Fort Monroe is truly America: it has classism, it has racism, it has… you name it, it’s all inside this little gun bowl that we have here. And top it off with a cherry, in 2011, former president Barack Obama made it a national monument, at least a portion of this fort.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: And now you’re the superintendent of this national monument, as you say, embodies so much of American history. Is your job emotionally hard sometimes?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Terry: That’s a lovely question. Often times I’m not asked that question. Yes it is emotional at times. I mean, considering that when I did my DNA recently it takes me back to Cameroon… and it’s really fascinating to know I’m Cameroonian… so when I drive through the gates every day there are times I get really choked up because I know what happened in this space. It’s a huge responsibility. I want the community to be proud of what I’m doing. I know that slavery was harsh, it was painful, and it has a lot of mixed emotions in the theme itself.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Terry: I try to tell everybody that slavery screwed us all up. Because I’m so close to it, I struggle with it sometimes. But I know that as long as I’m in this uniform, and as long as I love this great country and I want it to be better… The Constitution doesn’t say that we’re a perfect union, it says, “In order to form a more perfect union,” and I take that to mean that we all need to participate. Sometimes that means that it brings in the ugly parts of our history, with the country being only 230 years old. You go to England or Africa and they have ashtrays older than our country. We’re literally just learning how to be a country, and I think we all just need to figure this thing out.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: Terry Brown is superintendent at Fort Monroe National Monument in Norfolk, Virginia.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: Terry and I have been working together to help commemorate the arrival of the first Africans in what becomes British North America, in a week or two at Fort Monroe. It’s been very interesting to see what this looks like up close: the anxiety, the struggle with nomenclature, the debates over where the first African people first arrived, old Point Comfort versus Jamestown. It’s interesting to see how complicated it is even in commemoration, I’m just wondering what it looks like at a little more distance.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: Part of what’s interesting about it is directly related to what you just said, Ed, which is when you don’t think very deeply the commemoration of anything seems very straightforward, right? Like, it’s something that publicly we’re going to announce and do something and say something official. But in this case, you don’t have to dig very far to get at all of these complexities about what is being commemorated, what kind of commemoration is appropriate, what kinds of beginnings and endings are we talking about, who are including? It’s on social media. There’s now, as of the last few days, a debate between historians about this very issue, about is it slavery before slavery institutionalized. Do we call it that or not call it that? What does that mean? Were these people enslaved or were they, as Cassandra Newbie Alexander says, un-free? Is that a better way of putting it?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: It’s amazing that it’s not very far beneath the surface historically speaking, which I suppose makes perfect sense because it’s not very far beneath the surface of the United States as a nation as a whole: the question of race and where it fits and how we grapple with it in America’s history.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Right. It feels that the volume is going to really be raised on this particular commemoration because of that number… 400… and what that number means relative to the age of the nation itself, which really is a humbling thing to consider: that the institution is slavery, even as an ill-defined set of practices that is largely without a name in North America in terms of it being an institution, that that still precedes the establishment of the United States and therefore it connects directly to the debate as to whether or not slavery is part of the country’s DNA, to use one of the ways that this problem is framed.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: My sense, at least, is that a lot of what is creating concern or that raises apprehensions about what to do with this particular anniversary has to do with what it means about America and if we are, in fact, younger as a nation than slavery itself, then we have to acknowledge that there’s some kind of indebtedness to the country’s own greatness or prominence or complexities has in this institution.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: I think that juxtaposition is made even clearer by the simultaneous celebration, as opposed to commemoration, of the birth of representative democracy in the same colony at the same time. That whole struggle between who are we really is played out in a kind of theater. What would you all think about that? Is there something lost by having these commemorations woven together? Or is it a useful reminder?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: I think it’s important to always weave together… to the extent that you can… people’s experiences across the color line, to use a great 20th century formulation. If you have people who were imagining freedom in the colony of Virginia, which is a very famous book that we all know and love… Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom… that Virginia becomes a really important birthplace for both the formalization of the slave institution and for these ideas about democracy coming from Jefferson and others. So you can’t, in some ways, disentangle not even just the ideas or the abstractions, but the geography of America’s founding from the slavery-democracy couplet.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: I guess there’s also something that’s embedded even more in what’s a contemporary debate now about the country and its identity, which is to say it’s important to mark the arrival of slavery as an institution in the British colonies, but if we recognize that there’s a Spanish… or at least an Iberian… version of slavery in the Americas almost a full century before we even get to what happens in Virginia in 1619, then that actually also changes what we are as a country: that we’re in fact a nation with both Spanish roots and with English roots. That also, I think, is a very touchy proposition for a lot of people.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: And you know, commemorations, obviously, they like firsts. Commemorations are about the first of whatever. But as you’re suggesting here, Nathan, what’s interesting and significant here is that really what’s more accurate and meaningful is that… take away the firsts and what ultimately becomes the United States is just part of this longer narrative, a much longer and more tangled story which really is, in a sense, the way history isn’t told very often and should be told more often.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: Right. And that’s the thing that I think for a lot of people makes the 1619 moment such a bittersweet one, which is to say that this, in many ways, is kind of an occurrence of maritime accident: that a ship gets raided, its cargo gets moved out of the normal traffic of Atlantic slavery at the time. Yet, from that moment, you then have this larger saga about the United States and its own centuries-long struggle with capitalism and with racism and with its own sense of democracy and identity. That, too, is a powerful thing, right? That this moment that easily could not have happened ends up becoming a starter for a whole host of generational struggles that frankly the country is still very much grappling with.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Nathan: I wonder if that too is a lesson to think about around this anniversary, which is simply to say that there are a lot of people who want to do hand ringing and gnashing their teeth about election cycles or what feel like aberrations in the normal sweep of a progressive nation, but I wonder if the lessons of 1619 are also about having a certain kind of perspective about what the unforeseen consequences can be of countries that are still trying to, as we are, figure it out and in some ways get the question of democracy right.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed: That’s going to do it for us today, but you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode or ask us your questions about history. You’ll find us at backstoryradio.org, or send an email to backstory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter at BackStory Radio.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne: Special thanks this week to the Johns Hopkins studios in Baltimore and to Amber Kennedy. BackStory is produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities, and the environment.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Speaker 13: Brian Balogh is professor of history at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of history and American studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is Hebert Baxter Adams associate professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia Humanities.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":99,"tags":100,"thumb":101},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":12},[14,15,16,17,18,19],{"src":21,"caption":22,"derivatives":102},{"square_small":24,"square_medium":25},{"index":104,"title":105,"description":106,"audio":28,"tags":107,"transcript":7,"episode":108},4,"Additional Resources","\u003Cp>Used by BackStory:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fweb.cvent.com\u002Fevent\u002F5dfca6fc-5f34-4a49-998b-0cdcbb3b062f\u002Fsummary?RefId=AE\">1619 Making of America Summit\u003C\u002Fa>, featuring Cassandra Newby-Alexander\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>John K. Thornton, “Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, “Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“20. and odd Negroes”; \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.encyclopediavirginia.org\u002F_20_and_odd_Negroes_an_excerpt_from_a_letter_from_John_Rolfe_to_Sir_Edwin_Sandys_1619_1620\">an excerpt \u003C\u002Fa>from a letter from John Rolfe to Sir Edwin Sandys, Encyclopedia Virginia.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Zora Neale Hurston, “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’” (mentioned)\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Available Online:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.nytimes.com\u002Finteractive\u002F2019\u002F08\u002F14\u002Fmagazine\u002F1619-america-slavery.html\">The 1619 Project\u003C\u002Fa>” – The New York Times\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fthe1a.org\u002Fshows\u002F2019-08-22\u002Fthe-1619-project\">The 1619 Project\u003C\u002Fa>” – 1A (an interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones, Wesley Morris and Linda Villarosa about how the New York Times project was accomplished.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.usatoday.com\u002Fin-depth\u002Fnews\u002Fnation\u002F2019\u002F08\u002F21\u002Fwanda-tucker-angola-slavery-1619-history-america-black-family\u002F2016591001\u002F\">1619: Searching for Answers\u003C\u002Fa>” – USAToday\u003C\u002Fp>\n",[14],{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":109,"tags":110,"thumb":111},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":12},[14,15,16,17,18,19],{"src":21,"caption":22,"derivatives":112},{"square_small":24,"square_medium":25},1790963930251]