As Americans gear up for the 400th anniversary of the 1607 settlement of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, VA, a number of voices have called for an integrated and relevant national celebration. Among the leading voices are former Virginia governor and current Richmond, VA, mayor L. Douglas Wilder and historian and EBONY Executive Editor Emeritus Lerone Bennett Jr., who explored what he called "The Black Coming" in two prize-winning books, Before The Mayflower and The Shaping of Black America. In a JET interview, Bennett said that the Blacks who arrived in Jamestown in August 1619, a year before the arrival of the celebrated Mayflower, are central to the meaning of Jamestown and America.
JET: You've maintained that the arrival of the first Black settlers in the first permanent English settlement in America was one of the major events of American history [see inset].
LB: The Black Founding Fathers and Founding Mothers of Jamestown--the first group consisted of an almost equal number of males and females--changed the color and the meaning of America, and there can be no real, that is to say, true celebration of that event that does not recognize and reflect on the fact that African-Americans were among the founders of that colony and of America.
JET: Were the Black Jamestown settlers the first Blacks in America?
LB: No. They were the first Blacks in the first permanent English settlement in America. A growing body of evidence indicates that Blacks or people who would be called Blacks today were among the first settlers in the New World. They were, as Ivan Van Sertima and others have pointed out, among the pioneer settlers of Mexico and the West. They accompanied the Spanish explorers as servants and scouts, and some remained in the New World.
JET: Were the first Blacks at Jamestown slaves?
LB: Contrary to what almost all textbooks say, the African-American Adventure began not in slavery but in freedom. Most of the first Black immigrants, like most of the first White immigrants, were held in indentured servitude for a number of years to pay for their passage and, then freed. During a transitional period of some 40 years, the first Black immigrants in English America held property, sued in court, and accumulated pounds and plantations. In late 1623 or early 1624, Antoney and Isabell, two of the first Black arrivals, brought what might have been a shipboard romance to a significant conclusion with what was probably the birth of the first Black born in English America, a boy named William. The Black population increased by natural additions and importation, and by 1649, there were 300 or so African-Americans. One of the early settlers was Anthony Johnson, who quickly worked out his term of indenture and started accumulating property. In 1651, according to official records, he imported and paid for five servants, some of whom were White, and was granted 250 acres of land under the headright system, which permitted planters to claim 50 acres for each individual brought to the colony.
JET: Was there racism then?
LB: There were undoubtedly fools and individual racists then, but there was no system of racism. Most of the population consisted of White, Black and Indian indentured servants, and the evidence indicates that they worked together in the fields, played together, ran away together, and mated and married. This changed drastically in the sixth decade of the century when the White founding fathers, spurred on by greed and the unprotected political status of African immigrants, enacted laws that eventually reduced most African-Americans to slavery.
JET: What, in your opinion, would be the best celebration or, as you say, reflection on this event?
LB: We need to think hard before, during, and after the celebration. We need to think hard, specifically about the process by the which the White founding fathers appropriated the land, forcibly and violently separated the colony's working class of Blacks, poor Whites and Indians, and deliberately imposed slavery. This process continued for decades, and the White founding fathers had to whip some White men and women and to exile others to teach them that it was against the law to deal with Blacks as equal human beings. This suggests, among other things, that freedom probably preceded slavery and widespread integration preceded segregation in America. I discuss the relations between Blacks, Whites, and Native Americans in "The Road Not Taken" chapter in The Shaping of Black America. I believe the best way to celebrate an event is to deal with the lessons of that event, and in this instance, as in other iconic celebrations, the lessons Americans didn't learn are the most important lessons of all.
A year before the arrival of the Mayflower, 246 years before the end of slavery, 335 years before Brown v. Board of Education, 344 years before the March on Washington, a "Dutch man of Warr" sailed up the river James and landed the first generation of Blacks at Jamestown, Virginia.
Nobody knows the hour or date of The Black Coming. But there is not the slightest doubt about the month and year. John Rolfe, who betrayed Pocahontas and experimented with tobacco, was there, and he said in a letter that the ship arrived "about the latter end of August" in 1619 and that it "brought not anything but 20 and odd Negroes." Concerning which the most charitable thing to say is that John Rolfe was probably pulling his superior's leg. For no ship ever called at an American port with a more momentous cargo. In the hold of this ship, in a manner of speaking, was the whole gorgeous panorama of Black America, was jazz and the Spirituals and Bigger and King and Malcolm and millions of other Xs and crosses, along with Mahalia singing, Edward Kennedy Ellington composing, and Michael Jordan slam-dunking ... It was all there, illegible and inevitable, on that August day. A man with eyes would have seen it and would have announced to his startled contemporaries that this ship heralds the beginning of the first Civil War and, if we're not careful, the second.
Excerpted from The Shaping of Black America by Lerone Bennett Jr. with illustrations by Charles White. Copyright [c] 1969,1975, by Johnson Publishing Company and Lerone Bennett Jr. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce and quote material without permission.