The Mayflower, the ship which every history book tells you founded English America, arrived in Massachusetts in October of 1620.
Descendants of “people who came over on the Mayflower” make a VERY big thing about how their forefathers founded America. They were the Pilgrim Fathers.
The year before the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth Rock, John Smith wrote that “twenty niggurs” had arrived in Virginia.
Since John Smith was a British subject he could be prosecuted on his use of Hate Speech by spelling it “niggurs.” But I have to warn the British authorities, if they want to get John Smith from where he is now to London, the extradition procedures will be awesome.
Those “twenty niggurs” were not slaves. They were indentured, like so many white men were. It would be over a generation before black slavery was legalized in Virginia. In fact, Massachusetts legalized slavery before Virginia did.
Those “twenty niggurs” came here as free men, a year before the Pilgrim Fathers founded this country.
No “black leader” has ever mentioned this.
No “black leader” ever will.
#1 by Joe R. on 04/28/2005 - 4:28 pm
One time I was in the library of a local community college here and I happened to see a copy of something called the ‘Black Almanac’ right were I was sitting. I thumbed through it and saw something interesting. It said that the British colonies/America only imported about 5% of the total number of Black slaves which were brought to “the Americas.” Now that’s a ratio of 19 to 1 between English-speaking America and Latin America. That’s truly amazing. I think that someone has a little bit of “guilt tripping” to catch up on. We also hear much about the “approximately” fifty-million Blacks who died as a result of this “Black Diaspora.” Well, if the Latin American colonies had 95% of the slaves, presumably they also were responsible for 95% of those deaths. It’s well-known that the Portuguese, in particular, used barbaric methods. One can look even further back and consider that the Muslim world used this same type of race-based slavery for 1,500 years. The explorer, David Livingstone I believe, wrote about how the Muslim slavers would march them across the Sahara in their bare feet. I will spare the details of what resulted, but he said that he wept upon seeing it. I even read an article in the BBC about a reminent population of people in India, descending from slaves imported from East Africa. Similar reminent populations, not having anything to do with Christian Europeans, can be found from the Morocco to China. I think that “historical White guilt” is a little out’ve proportion.
#2 by Peter on 04/28/2005 - 7:20 pm
Thanks, Joe R. for that info!
#3 by Scott on 04/28/2005 - 11:23 pm
At the time that the first Africans came to the English colonies there were no Jews in England. It was not until a generation later that the Jews were allowed back into England. Considering how prominent some Jews were in the slave trade I wonder if they had any influence in the transformation of Africans from indentured servants to slaves. Or maybe the timing is just a coincidence. Does anybody out there have any information on why this transformation occured?
#4 by Elizabeth on 04/29/2005 - 12:38 pm
Walter Williams, the former chairman of the Economics Dept. at George Mason U., mentioned this in a column roughly ten years ago. According to his column, the court case that resulted in the blacks’ status changing from indentured to slave was brought by a black planter.
Incidentally, some of those black slaves ended up in Europe. One illustration of this is the black dwarf in Velasquez’ painting of the (ugly) little blond princess.
#5 by Scott on 04/30/2005 - 10:09 am
Thanks for the info Elizabeth. I bet you wouldn’t just sit there and keep your trap shut while your country is overrun by foreigners like your worthless namesake the queen of England. ciao