Enslaved Angolans were the first Africans in Virginia, and likely the first in all of the Thirteen Colonies, according to Sheila Walker, an American film maker and researcher in cultural anthropology.
[4] These first Angolan slaves of Virginia (15 men and 17 women[4]) were Mbundu[5] and Bakongo, who spoke Kimbundu and Kikongo languages respectively.
Based on the data mentioned, many Angolan slaves came from distinct ethnic groups, such as the Bakongo, the Tio[10] and Northern Mbunbu people (from Kingdom of Ndongo).
The Bakongo, from the kingdom of Kongo, were Catholics, who had voluntarily converted to Catholicism in 1491 after the Portuguese established trade relations in this territory.
Forty of the slaves in the revolt (some Angolans) were decapitated and their heads strung on sticks to serve as a warning to others.
[6] Later, some 300 former Angolan slaves founded their own community in the Braden River delta, near what is now downtown Bradenton, Florida.
Rich hunters and slaveholders hired 200 mercenaries and captured 300 black people and burned their houses.
It is believed, however, that some Angolans fled in rafts and successfully reached Andros Island in The Bahamas, where their lives were established.
[6] Large-scale Angolan immigration to the United States began in the 1970s, fleeing regional wars in their country.
Initially, most Angolans refugees emigrated to France, Belgium, and Portugal – the country to which Angola belonged in colonial times and with which they share a language.
But in the 1980s, European Economic Community restrictions on immigration forced many of them to emigrate to other countries, such as the United States.
[14] There are also some Angolans in Brockton, Massachusetts, attracted to the area by the presence of the established, Portuguese-speaking Cape Verdean community.