First Africans in Virginia

[2][3] They were sold to the governor of Virginia by "Capt Jope", the commander of the White Lion, who attacked and plundered them from the slave ship São João Baptista, which was carrying over three hundred people who had been kidnapped from the Kingdom of Ndongo and were being forcibly sailed to New Spain (modern-day Mexico).

[6] Thousands of people were captured by Portuguese slave traders and their African allies such as the Imbangala, in invasions of the Kingdom of Ndongo (part of modern Angola) under Governor Luís Mendes de Vasconcellos.

Of the 350 total on the slave ship, about 143 died in the voyage, and 24 children were sold during a stop at the Colony of Santiago in Jamaica, with 123 enslaved people eventually being taken to Veracruz, in addition to the smaller group of 20-30 taken by the privateers,[2] or perhaps double that amount.

The primary source document for the White Lion's arrival is as follows:[12] About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunes arriued at Point-Comfort, the Comandor name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman.

[16] Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address of 1865 refers to "the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil", which would be approximately 1615, according to scholar Diana Schaub an allusion to the events of 1619.

The 350th anniversary of the arrival was marked in 1969 by a Virginia effort organized by civil rights attorney Oliver Hill, and with featured speaker Samuel DeWitt Proctor; it was however opposed by others including then-freshman state senator and future-Governor Douglas Wilder as an occasion inappropriate for celebration.