First Africans in Jamestown

The first documented Africans in mainland English America arrived at Point Comfort (in present-day Hampton) late in Aug. 1619. Colonial officials traded food for these “20 and odd” Africans, who had been seized from a Portuguese slave ship en route to Spanish America. Some of the Africans were transported to Jamestown shortly thereafter. By 1625 at least nine African men and women lived here. Many of the colony's early Africans were held as slaves, but some individuals became free. A legal framework for hereditary, lifelong slavery evolved in Virginia during the 1600s. The United States abolished slavery in 1865.