Which People & Events Helped Shape Black History?
Africans were first brought to the English colony of Jamestown, Va., in 1619. Records from 1623 and 1624 list them as indentured servants, although this is still up for debate. One of the earliest known Blacks in Jamestown was Anthony Johnson, an indentured servant who went on to purchase his freedom as well as his own land and servants of his own. It wasn’t officially until the 18th century–coinciding with the boom of tobacco and thus more of a need for labor–that the grounds were established defining slaves as Africans and non-Christians or, on occasion, American Indians. Escaped slave Crispus Attucks was the first casualty in the 1770 Boston Massacre. His death makes him a martyr in the fight for American independence from the British. A number of slave rebellions occurred throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as people had become intolerant to the inhumanity of slavery and were ready to take action: the Prosser Rebellion in Virginia in 1800, the Vesey Rebellion in Charleston, S
