August 20th 1619

While a lot of us in social media land have chosen to celebrate the last day of slavery in the U.S. the Nation Association for the Advancement of Color People, the NAACP has decided to celebrate August 20th, 1619, which at the writing of this post is just a little over 400 years ago when the first hand full of African slaves taken out of Africa arrived in Port Comfort, British North America.

The almost two dozen African slaves that arrived August 20the, 1619 were the first legitimately documented African slaves in what is now the U.S. even though it's believed that undocumented African slaves were actually in this country even before someone officially logged them in. August 20th, 1619 marked be beginning of a worldwide-cruelty that would last for over 400 years. So let me try to explain why I feel that slavery was a particular type of cruelty to the African race that I would much rather celebrate the ending of, rather than its beginning.

Slaves were a commodity that many different nations traded in, so during those 400 years of slavery in the U.S., the ships participating in the wholesale removal of African people from Africa flew the flags from many different nations. After hundreds of years, the British were among the first to put an end to slavery in Great Britain, the British then joined with others to blockade to west coast of Africa from illegal slave traders, like America, demonstrated a skill at evading the British blockade and continuing to remove generations of young men and women from their African homeland on a scale so vast that even though thousands of slaves lost their lives on the journey to the Americas the slave lives lost were looked at as simply the cost of doing business.

In the end, our ancestors would no doubt be pleased to learn that slavery would eventually be done away-with in the Americas. Something the ancestors prayed for and entertained rumors about but did not live long enough to see.  They might even be surprised to learn that my thoughts about reparations have evolved because after 400 years of being under-appreciated, under-represented, underpaid, and under-educated reparations in the form of opportunities like getting back black-owned farmland seized by the local governments in the south, or reparations in the form of college education and job opportunities where there was once none all goes toward building a stronger America, if you ask me.

And, after 400 years a lot has changed in America; slavery is gone, Port Comfort where the first African slaves first landed in North America today has been renamed: Fort Monroe, in Hampton, Virginia and after 400 years of slavery there are still some things that remain the same with a few minor differences; the chains have been mainly replaced by debt (okay I had to throw that one in) and many of the injustices our slave ancestors suffered from, during slavery, still exist today white supremacy, mass incarceration, and racial violence. So when it comes to celebrating August 20th, 1619 the beginning of slavery in this country and June 19, 1865, the end of slavery in the U.S. they are both important dates, in my opinion.

The Internet of people, places, and things will continue to make it easier for those willing to do the looking/Internet searching to come up with alternate times worthy of celebration by African American people. I would not be surprised if one day some one's Internet search leads them to the first African slave to be put on a ship bound for the Americas, or perhaps it will lead to the first African mother to give birth to the first African slave to reach the U.S. While that future day might still be significant to the beginning of slavery in the Americas, it's the last day of slavery in this country, Juneteenth, that will always be the most significant to me.