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In 1619, a Dutch ship tied up at the colony of Jamestown in Virginia. The captain paid for some tobacco it took aboard with about 20 black African captives. The “slaves” were probably seized as a prize from a slave trader bound for the Spanish West Indies. The popular theory has been that the blacks became “indentured servants,” like white settlers who could not afford passage to the colonies. There is no record of this in the papers dealing with Virginia or Jamestown. The word “slave” did not appear in records of Virginia until 1656 and laws dealing with “slaves” did not appear until the 1660s.

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16y ago

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