((PKG))  ECHOES OF 1619   
((Banner:  Echoes of 1619)) 
((Reporter/Camera:  Chris Simkins)) 
((Editor:  Betty Ayoub))  
((Adapted by:  Martin Secrest)) 
((Map:  Hampton, Virginia))   
 
((NATS)) 
((Pop-Up Banner:  
400 years ago, the trade ship ÒWhite LionÓ arrives carrying the 
first enslaved Africans to English North America)) 
((NATS)) 
((Calvin Pearson, President, 1619 Society)) 
The ship came up the Chesapeake Bay, and it landed here at 
Point Comfort in the latter part of August of 1619, and on that ship 
were Ô20 and odd Africans.Õ 
((NATS)) 
((Calvin Pearson, President, 1619 Society)) 
The first Africans who were brought here were destined for a life 
of servitude.  They had to work the plantations from sunup to 
sunset, the tobacco fields, the corn fields.  They had to work 
these fields with no hope of ever being free. 
((Bill Wiggins, Hampton Historian))    
It makes me feel goosebumps and a sad nostalgia.  I just canÕt 
imagine the sailing into the bay of these chained individuals in a 
strange land, not knowing anything about where they were.  Being 
taken off of the vessel and told, ÔYou are going to work here.  You 
are going to live here.Õ 
((Cassandra Newby Alexander, Norfolk State University))   
These were free people who had been kidnapped as free people 
and sold into slavery. 
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A few days after the White LionÕs arrival, another ship brought an 
enslaved woman named Angela)) 
((Cassandra Newby Alexander, Norfolk State University))   
Angela, interestingly, is the only African whose name was actually 
written in the records in 1620, that survived.  Now, there may 
have been other names mentioned, but those records did not 
survive. 
((NATS Ð archeological dig)) 
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Archaeologists are searching for clues about AngelaÕs life at the 
Jamestown settlement)) 
((James Horn, President, Jamestown Rediscovery))    
With Angela, we can tell the much broader story of slavery and 
the beginnings of slavery in our country, and racism which really 
went hand in hand with slavery.  And at the same time, give 
Angela, through our imagination, some sense of identity, some 
sense of dignity. 
((Bill Wiggins, Hampton Historian)) 
They did most of the work, and a number of them obviously died 
in the process, but we owe a debt to those Africans, because they 
were the foundation of the economic development of what 
became the United States of America. 
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The economic benefits of slavery were not confined to the south)) 
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Preservation efforts are underway at a colonial-era burial ground 
in Newport, Rhode Island)) 
((Keith Stokes, Newport Historian)) 
So, as early as 1650, Newport had a burial place where anyone, 
regardless of race or class or ethnicity, could be buried.  By 1705, 
the northwest section of this burying ground, we are starting to 
see enslaved Africans buried there.  And over the next 100 years, 
hundreds and hundreds of markers and hundreds and hundreds 
of burials are being made at that burying ground.  We believe 
there were at least 3,000 burials during the life cycle of that 
burying ground. 
((NATS:  cemetery)) 
((Keith Stokes, Newport Historian))  
My own family is buried here, but more importantly, itÕs a sense of 
African identity.  I mean, this is a place where men and women of 
African descent actually lived in this community and were buried 
here.  And it gives me a direct connectivity to the history of my 
own community. 
((Keith Stokes, Historian))   
So, one of the great ironies of Rhode Island is the fact that we are 
founded under religious freedom, but we soon enter and dominate 
the enslavement of human beings in the African slave trade. 
((NATS Ð street)) 
((Rev. Nicholas Knisely, Bishop of Episcopal Diocese of 
Rhode Island))  
The church, particularly in Rhode Island, profited directly from the 
slave trade.  But in a more direct way, we owned slaves.  We had 
clergy who owned slaves.  We had slaves who were owned by 
the missionary organizations that were creating by the Anglican 
churches here in the United States. 
((Keith Stokes, Historian))   
Between 1705 and 1805, there are at least 900 documented slave 
ships that begin in Rhode Island and eventually end from West 
Africa, through the West Indies, and back to Rhode Island. 
((Locator:   
DeWolf Cemetery, Bristol, Rhode Island)) 
((NATS 
This is where it is, right?  
This is the DeWolf family cemetery.)) 
((James DeWolf Perry, Descendant of slave trader James 
DeWolf)) 
This is the funeral mound of James DeWolf.  It is hard to muster 
much sympathy for the lack of dignity in this for someone who 
engaged in slave trading, and on that kind of an epic scale. 
((James DeWolf Perry, Descendant of slave trader James 
DeWolf))  
James DeWolf and his extended family brought more than12,000 
enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage, and are probably 
responsible for about half a million people who are alive today in 
the Americas, descended from those who crossed the Middle 
Passage on their ships. 
((Katrina Browne, Descendant of slave trader James DeWolf))  
They would take rum, primarily, as well as other commodities, to 
the coast of West Africa to trade for men, women and children, 
who were then brought back to be sold at auction either in the 
Caribbean Ñ and primarily that was in Cuba Ñ or in the 
American South, in ports like Charleston, South Carolina. 
((James DeWolf Perry, Descendant of slave trader James 
DeWolf))  
All of this was tremendously important in building the economy of 
the North and what became the United States.  In the colonial era, 
the slave trade, and the provisioning trade to slave plantations of 
the West Indies, were a key part of what allowed the British 
colonies to prosper and eventually to rebel against Great Britain 
and become an independent nation.  It's incumbent upon me, as 
someone with this kind of a family history, and knowing about this 
history, to speak out about what our family did, and to help other 
people draw the connections to the ways in which their families 
are connected to slavery.  If we bury the dark parts of a family 
history, if we bury the dark parts of a national history, we will start 
to assume things like that didn't happen, and that will greatly 
distort our understanding how we got here today. 
((Locator:   
Hampton, Virginia)) 
((NATS)) 
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Born to slavery in Virginia in 1624, William TuckerÕs African 
parents arrived on the White Lion)) 
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His descendants are buried here)) 
((Brenda Tucker, Descendant of William Tucker, First African 
Family in Virginia))  
There were so many captured and put on the slave ships.  So 
many did not survive, but those that did survive, we are the 
healthy ones, our ancestors.  It is a sacred ground for us.  And so, 
there is no way we can pass it or walk through it without thinking 
of an ancestor.  We exist because they worked hard.  They 
struggled.  They did whatever they had to do to survive. 
((NATS))