4 | EXPRESS | 08.23.2019 | WEEKEND
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Va. marks Africans’ arrival
VIRGINIA Four hundred years after American slavery and democratic selfrule were born in what became the state of Virginia, ceremonies will mark the arrival of enslaved Africans in the mid-Atlantic colony and seek healing from a legacy of bondage. Weekend events in Tidewater Virginia will unfold against rising white nationalism across the country, racist tweets by President Trump, and a lingering blackface scandal surrounding the state’s governor. Commemorations will include Sunday’s “Healing Day” on the Chesapeake Bay, where two ships traded men and women for food and supplies from English colonists in August 1619. A bell will ring for four minutes; churches nationwide are set to join in. Virginia’s two U.S. senators and its governor will make remarks at a Saturday ceremony. A family that traces its bloodline to those first Africans will hold a reflection at its cemetery on Friday. “This moment means everything to folks like myself who are African American and to the folks on the continent of Africa as well,” said Mary Elliott, curator of American slavery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. “But it should mean something to everybody, regardless of
Terry Brown oversees a former military base where Africans first arrived in Virginia in 1619.
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race,” she added, “because it is a moment that defined the nation.” Though little noted at the time, the arrival of the enslaved Africans in England’s first successful colony is now considered pivotal in American history. In a document from the time, Englishman John Rolfe wrote that leaders of the colony traded provisions to buy the slaves. From the White Lion and another ship, English colonists took more than 30 Africans to properties along the James River. By that time, more than 500,000 enslaved Africans had already crossed the Atlantic to European colonies, but the Africans in Virginia are widely considered the first in Englishcontrolled North America. They
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came 12 years after the founding of Jamestown, England’s first permanent colony. Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University, said the commemoration’s timing highlights the country’s foundational contradictions on race. “We want to recognize this historic event,” Kidd said. “And at the same time, we have a president who spouts off racist things. And we have a governor who still has not satisfied everybody when it comes to the blackface scandal.” In February, a picture surfaced from Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook page showing a man in blackface next to someone in Ku Klux Klan clothing. Northam denies involvement.
He will speak Saturday about “the atrocity of slavery” and “the racial inequities that continue to persist,” his press secretary said. The 1619 commemoration follows recent racist tweets from Trump. Yet Trump also signed into law a requirement for a panel to develop programs that acknowledge Africans’ arrival. Among the commission’s members is Terry Brown, the first black superintendent of the Fort Monroe National Monument, a former U.S. military base on the site of the Africans’ 1619 arrival. Brown said Healing Day will allow people from all walks of life “to talk, to laugh, to cry and in some small way to break the insidiousness of racism.” BEN FINLEY (AP)
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