Video: '20 and Odd: Africans' Arrival in 1619'

(Friday, August 20, 1619) — The English ship White Lion docked today at Port Comfort (now Fort Monroe) in the British colony of Virginia, carrying “20 and odd” kidnapped Angolans who had been prisoners on a Portuguese ship that was captured by the White Lion’s crew.

The arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World marked the beginning of two and a half centuries of slavery in North America.