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They were sold to Virginia planters to work in tobacco fields
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They were not "sold". Slavery was illegal under British law in Virginia up to 1720. (Virginia slave code). After serving 3-7 years of indentured servitude; like their white counterparts, they gained their freedom and was given property and the rights of free men.
Both African men and women intermarried with whites (rich & poor) up until 1661 in Virginia. Miscegenation was a huge problem especially with the steady flow of African labor into the colonies; the high number of mulatto children being born as a result placed enormous strains on the "Church parishes/Wards", who were responsible for the care and maintenance of these children born often to orphaned or destitute mothers. In the south, a child's legal status depended upon that of its mother. If the mother was free that child took on the same legal status. Children of free black men who mated with permanently enslaved women were not so lucky. Though children of indentured females were often made to serve 30 years before gaining their freedom.
By 1705 the Virginia General Assembly started discussing the "permanent enslave" legal status for NEWLY arrived Africans; however the final law wasn't passed until 1720. That law DID NOT affect the thousands who were already here & living as Free & Indentured persons.
Most Black Americans can trace lines back to the earliest Free & Indentured families of color. By 1770's nearly 9000 of their descendants would serve proudly as free men in the Revolutionary War under Gen. Washington!
It's sad that most Americans have no idea of these facts! American history is way to complex to sum up in a few paragraphs...here are a few books I found helpful:
1)Free African Americans by Paul Heinegg ( Traces free black families to their origins in colonial America.
2) Children of Perdition, by Tim Harshaw
3) The History of Black America , by Tim Harshaw
4) Virginia Colony records, often found in genealogy libraries
5) Early Virginia Papers and references materials
6) Ferrar Papers, Magdalene College in Cambridge, England..also found online "Library of Virginia"
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First black Africans were brought to Jamestown by the?
21 slaves were bought from a shipwrecked Dutch ship in exchange for supplies in 1619
What happened to the first americans brought to Jamestown in 1619?
Most of the Americans brought to Jamestown in the beginning died of diseases,food, and not having warm shelter. Most of them were gentlemen who were looking for quick money. They did not how to survive in the wilderness.
What happened in 1619 that would affect the U.S for centuries?
Along with the the first representative legislative assembly in the New World, 1619 also marked the arrival of the first recorded Africans to English North America, the recruitment of English women in significant numbers, the first official English Thanksgiving in North America, and the entrepreneurial and innovative .
Who was the main colonist who helped with the developed of tobacco crop.?
John Rolfe an Englishman brought the first tobacco seeds to Jamestown on a visit.
What colony was founded in 1607?
No colony was founded in 1619, but in Jamestown on July 30th of 1619, the House of Burgesses (the first representative assembly in future-America) met in the town's church, and a month later a group of enslaved Africans arrived (which marked "the first step toward the enslavement of Africans within what was to be the American republic," according to my textbook).
