Today on Sojourner Truth:
400 years ago this month, a Portuguese ship carrying the first 20 enslaved people from West Africa, most likely from modern-day Angola, arrived on the shores of occupied Indigenous lands known today as the United States.
The ship landed at Port Comfort, in what was then the British colony of Virginia, in August of 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed in what is now Massachusetts. Its voyage formed part of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, in which at least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.
An estimated 1.8 million people died along the Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. Out of the roughly 10.7 million Africans who survived, only about 388,000 were sent directly to North America, as an overwhelming majority were sent to the Caribbean and Brazil.
The forced arrival and enslavement of the 20 West Africans who were taken to the United States marked the beginning of a four-century-long racist nightmare that were still experiencing as we speak.
Our guest is Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History & African-American Studies at the University of Houston, has written more than 30 books. His most recently published books include "White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa, From Rhodes to Mandela" and "Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music."
