The Black History Month 2021 theme, “Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity” explores the African diaspora, and the spread of Black families across the United States. You can’t look at the black family without also looking at womanism/feminism and intersectionality.
A Little History…In August of 1619, a journal entry recorded that “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony of Virginia and were then were bought by English colonists. Read more HERE.
The date and the story of the enslaved Africans have become symbolic of slavery’s roots, despite captive and free Africans likely being present in the Americas in the 1400s and as early as 1526 in the region that would become the United States. This is because when we teach “American ” history, our textbooks focus on the 13 English colonies and ignore the other European nations whose roots make up our nation, too. Who am I talking about? What about the Spanish and Portuguese settlements in the New World, which include Florida and California, Texas and New Mexico? St. Augustine, Florida, founded in September 1565 by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles of Spain, is the longest continually inhabited European-founded city in the United States. When he founded St. Augustine in 1565, not only were there black members of his crew, but he noted that his arrival had been preceded by free Africans in the French settlement at Fort Caroline, just a few miles north. The Roanoke, Virginia colony was established in 1585. Jamestown, Virginia, and Santa Fe, New Mexico were both founded in 1607. The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. The Dutch established New Netherlands, now Jersey City, New Jersey, around 1617, or around 1630 (the exact date is contested).
