In 1619, the Atlantic slave trade had been in progress for more than one century.
In 1619, the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista was heading to the port of Veracruz, in present-day Mexico. By that time, the Portuguese hold the asiento, the contract to trade in enslaved Africans to the Spanish Americas.
The ship São João Bautista whose captain was Manuel Mendes da Cunha left Luanda in the Portuguese colony of Angola in West Central Africa carrying nearly 350 enslaved Africans, most of whom we believe were enslaved in the Kingdom of Ndongo, located in the region of present-day Angola, and were very probably Kimbundu speakers.
During the Middle Passage, the São João Bautista was attacked by two English ships, the Treasurer and the White Lion that sailed off from the Netherlands, seizing part of the Portuguese slave ship’s enslaved Africans. Eventually, the São João Bautista arrived in Vera Cruz transporting only part of the original human cargo, as indicated on the SlaveVoyages Database, voyage ID 29251.
Now let’s recapitulate some points:
1) Before 1619, according to a Census taken just a few months before August 1619, when the twenty enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia, there were other Africans in the colony, though we do not have records of their arrival.
2) These 20 enslaved Africans were also not the first ones to arrive in the present-day region of the United States. In 1526, enslaved Africans participated in a Spanish expedition to establish an outpost (San Miguel de Guadalupe) on the North American coast in present-day South Carolina. Those Africans organized a rebellion in November of 1526, and destroyed the Spanish settlers’ ability to sustain the settlement, which they abandoned a year later.
3) Also, when Sir Francis Drake arrived at Roanoke Island, North Carolina, in 1586, he brought on board his fleet Africans seized from the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean.
4) Likewise, as early as May 1616, enslaved Africans worked in the British colony of Bermuda on the cultivation of tobacco.
5) Finally, needless to mention that enslaved, freed, or free Africans were present in the region of what became the United States. Among them was Juan Garrido (check the works of Matthew Restall and Hermann Bennett) an African-born man who assisted the Spanish in the conquest of the present-day region of the Caribbean, Mexico, and Florida.
The significance of 1619 is shaped by memory, not by history.
