1619 – Importation of Enslaved People from Africa Begins

“The continuous presence of persons of African descent on soil that became the United States begins in 1619 with the arrival of twenty Africans at Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch warship from the West Indies. Their arrival was a part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade; lasting almost four centuries (1501-1873). Although the twenty Africans… arrived by virtue of the slave trade, they actually became indentured servants, Thus, they eventually gained their freedom, and some later actually owned slaves themselves… By the end of the colonial period, blacks numbered about five hundred thousand and constituted their largest proportion of the total American population ever, nearly 20 percent.”