Editing African Americans (section)

===Colonial era===
{{Main|Slavery in the colonial history of the United States}}
{{See also|Atlantic slave trade}}
[[File:Africa slave Regions.svg|thumb|upright=0.9|right|Major slave trading regions of Africa, 15th–19th centuries]]
The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the [[Atlantic slave trade|transatlantic slave trade]] were people from several [[Middle Africa|Central]] and [[West Africa|West African]] ethnic groups. They had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7fr82/revision/3|title=The transatlantic slave trade|publisher=BBC|access-date=May 6, 2021|archive-date=May 6, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210506163511/https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7fr82/revision/3|url-status=live}}</ref> or sold by other West Africans, or by half-European "merchant princes"<ref>{{cite web|title=Implications of the slave trade for African societies|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/7|publisher=BBC|access-date=June 12, 2020|location=[[London]]|archive-date=June 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200609025050/https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxt3gk7/revision/7|url-status=live}}</ref> to European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas.<ref>{{cite web|title=The capture and sale of slaves|url=http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/africa/capture_sale.aspx|publisher=[[International Slavery Museum]]|access-date=October 14, 2015|location=[[Liverpool]]|archive-date=December 29, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191229214612/https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/africa/capture_sale.aspx|url-status=live}}</ref>

The first African slaves in what is now the United States arrived in the early 16th century. Africans were Among [[Juan Ponce de León]]'s 1513 voyage that landed in what would become [[Spanish Florida]], and enslaved Africans arrived around the same time to [[Spanish settlement of Puerto Rico|Spanish Puerto Rico]].<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |last2= |first2= |title=African Americans in St. Augustine 1565-1821 - Castillo de San Marcos National Monument (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/casa/learn/historyculture/african-americans-in-st-augustine-1565-1821.htm |access-date=2024-12-04 |website=www.nps.gov |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Hall |first=Stephanie |date=2019-08-28 |title=Beyond 1619: Slavery and the Cultures of America {{!}} Folklife Today |url=https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2019/08/beyond-1619/ |access-date=2024-12-04 |website=The Library of Congress}}</ref>

Africans also came via [[Captaincy General of Santo Domingo|Santo Domingo]] in the [[Caribbean]] to the [[San Miguel de Gualdape]] colony (most likely located in the [[Winyah Bay]] area of present-day [[South Carolina]]), founded by Spanish explorer [[Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón]] in 1526.<ref name="wright">{{cite journal|last=Robert Wright|first=Richard|author-link=Richard Robert Wright|year=1941|title=Negro Companions of the Spanish Explorers|journal=Phylon|volume=2|issue=4}}</ref> The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]]. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterward, due to an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to the Island of [[Hispaniola]], whence they had come.<ref name="wright" />

The enslaved explorer [[Estevanico|Esteban]] arrived in Florida with the [[Narváez expedition]] in 1528, a journey that first landed in Santo Domingo and later traveled into [[Spanish Texas]] and the [[Southwestern United States|Southwest]] before ending in Mexico.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Estevanico |url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/estevanico |access-date=2024-12-04 |website=Texas State Historical Association |language=en}}</ref>

The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free Black domestic servant from [[Seville]], and Miguel Rodríguez, a White [[Segovia]]n conquistador in 1565 in [[St. Augustine, Florida|St. Augustine]] (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in what is now the continental United States.<ref>{{citation|url=https://laflorida.org/florida-stories/|title=Luisa de Abrego: Marriage, Bigamy, and the Spanish Inquisition|publisher=University of South Florida|author1-link=J. Michael Francis|author=J. Michael Francis|access-date=July 21, 2018|archive-date=July 21, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180721163646/https://laflorida.org/florida-stories/|url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[File:1670 virginia tobacco slaves.jpg|thumb|left|Slaves processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia, illustration from 1670]]
The first recorded Africans in [[British America|English America]] (including most of the future United States) were [[First Africans in Virginia|"20 and odd negroes"]] who arrived in [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]], [[Colony of Virginia|Virginia]] via [[Old Point Comfort|Cape Comfort]] in August 1619 as [[indentured servant]]s.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Frank E. Jr.|last1=Grizzard|author-link1=Frank E. Grizzard Jr.|first2=D. Boyd|last2=Smith |title=Jamestown Colony: A Political, Social, and Cultural History|year=2007|publisher=ABC-CLIO |location=Santa Barbara, CA|isbn=978-1-85109-637-4|page=198}}</ref> As many Virginian settlers began to die from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers.<ref>{{cite book|first=Betty|last=Wood|title=The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies|year=1997|publisher=Hill and Wang|location=New York|isbn=978-0-8090-1608-2|chapter=Tobacco Slaves: The Chesapeake Colonies|pages=68–93}}</ref>

An indentured servant (who could be White or Black) would work for several years (usually four to seven) without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery. Servants could be bought, sold, or leased, and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or attempting to running away. Unlike slaves, they were freed after their term of service expired or if their freedom was purchased. Their children did not inherit their status, and on their release from contract they received "a year's provision of corn, double apparel, tools necessary", and a small cash payment called "freedom dues".<ref>{{cite magazine|first=Tim |last=Hashaw |title=The First Black Americans |url=https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |magazine=[[U.S. News & World Report]] |date=January 21, 2007 |access-date=February 13, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110202205901/https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |archive-date=February 2, 2011 }}</ref> Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-147667728.html?Q=Jamestown|title=The shaping of Black America: forthcoming 400th celebration|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia.com|date=June 26, 2006|access-date=January 20, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080305014338/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-147667728.html?Q=Jamestown|archive-date=March 5, 2008|url-status=dead}}</ref> They raised families, married other Africans and sometimes [[Interracial marriage|intermarried]] with Native Americans or European [[settler]]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |title=The First Black Americans  |publisher=Usnews.com – U.S. News & World Report |date=January 29, 2007 |access-date=January 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110202205901/https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |archive-date=February 2, 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
[[File:First Slave Auction 1655 Howard Pyle.jpg|thumb|upright|The first slave auction at [[New Amsterdam]] in 1655; illustration from 1895 by [[Howard Pyle]]<ref>{{cite web |title=New Netherland Institute :: Slave Trade |url=https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/digital-exhibitions/slavery-exhibit/slave-trade/ |website=newnetherlandinstitute.org |publisher=[[New Netherland Institute]] |access-date=July 8, 2019 |archive-date=July 8, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190708145212/https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/digital-exhibitions/slavery-exhibit/slave-trade/ |url-status=live }}</ref>]]
By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]], and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifetime slavery when they sentenced [[John Punch (slave)|John Punch]], a Negro, to lifetime servitude under his master [[Hugh Gwyn]], for running away.<ref>{{Cite book|title=White Over Black: American attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812|first=Winthrop|last=Jordan|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=1968|isbn=978-0807871416}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period|first=A. Leon|last=Higginbotham|publisher=Greenwood Press|year=1975|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ErPg7VegkcMC&pg=PR7|isbn=9780195027457}}</ref>

In [[Spanish Florida]], some [[Spaniards|Spanish]] married or had [[Placage|unions with]] [[Pensacola people|Pensacola]], [[Muscogee|Creek]] or [[List of ethnic groups of Africa|African]] women, both enslaved and free, and their descendants created a mixed-race population of [[mestizo]]s and [[mulatto]]s. The Spanish encouraged slaves from the [[Province of Georgia|colony of Georgia]] to come to Florida as a refuge, promising freedom in exchange for conversion to [[Catholic Church|Catholicism]]. [[Charles II of Spain|King Charles II]] issued a royal proclamation freeing all slaves who fled to Spanish Florida and accepted conversion and baptism. Most went to the area around [[St. Augustine, Florida|St. Augustine]], but escaped slaves also reached Pensacola. St. Augustine had mustered an all-Black [[militia]] unit defending Spanish Florida as early as 1683.<ref>{{citation|url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/sanctuary-in-the-spanish-empire.htm|title=Sanctuary in the Spanish Empire: An African American officer earns freedom in Florida|author=Gene Allen Smith, Texas Christian University|publisher=National Park Service|access-date=April 5, 2018|archive-date=January 10, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210110103703/https://www.nps.gov/articles/sanctuary-in-the-spanish-empire.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Slave Auction Ad.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|left|Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in [[Charleston, South Carolina]], in 1769]]
One of the Dutch African arrivals, [[Anthony Johnson (American Colonial)|Anthony Johnson]], would later own one of the first Black "slaves", [[John Casor]], resulting from the court ruling of a civil case.<ref name="russell">[https://archive.org/stream/freenegro00russrich#page/28/mode/2up/search/page+29 John Henderson Russell, ''The Free Negro In Virginia, 1619–1865''], Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1913, pp. 29–30, scanned text online.</ref><ref name="Sweet2005">{{Cite book|first=Frank W.|last=Sweet|title=Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kezflCVnongC&pg=PA117|date=July 2005|publisher=Backintyme|isbn=978-0-939479-23-8|page=117|access-date=June 16, 2015|archive-date=January 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107112641/https://books.google.com/books?id=kezflCVnongC&pg=PA117#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The [[Dutch West India Company]] introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven Black slaves into [[New Amsterdam]] (present-day [[New York City]]). All the colony's slaves, however, were freed upon its surrender to the English.<ref name="branchandroot">{{Citation|last=Hodges|first=Russel Graham|title=Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863|place=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=1999}}</ref>

[[Massachusetts Bay Colony|Massachusetts]] was the first English colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. In 1662, Virginia passed a law that children of enslaved women would take the status of the mother, rather than that of the father, as was the case under [[common law]]. This legal principle was called ''[[partus sequitur ventrum]]''.<ref name="Banks">[https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/52/ Taunya Lovell Banks, "Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit – Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191024221530/https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/52/ |date=October 24, 2019 }}, 41 ''Akron Law Review'' 799 (2008), Digital Commons Law, University of Maryland Law School. Retrieved April 21, 2009</ref><ref>PBS. ''Africans in America: the Terrible Transformation.'' "[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr3.html From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070604113622/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr3.html |date=June 4, 2007 }}." Accessed September 13, 2011.</ref>

By an act of 1699, Virginia ordered the deportation of all free Blacks, effectively defining all people of African descent who remained in the colony as slaves.<ref name="Wood">[https://books.google.com/books?id=BEd85InqqAIC&pg=PA48 William J. Wood, "The Illegal Beginning of American Slavery"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107112637/https://books.google.com/books?id=BEd85InqqAIC&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false |date=January 7, 2024 }}, ''ABA Journal'', 1970, American Bar Association</ref> In 1670, the colonial assembly passed a law prohibiting free and baptized Blacks (and Native Americans) from purchasing Christians (in this act meaning White Europeans) but allowing them to buy people "of their owne nation".<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Colored Freemen as Slave Owners in Virginia|first=John H.|last=Russell|journal=Journal of Negro History|date=June 1916|volume=1|issue=3|pages=233–242|doi=10.2307/3035621|jstor=3035621|doi-access=free | issn = 0022-2992}}</ref>

[[File:Runaway slave advertisement 9-15-1774-NY.gif|thumb|right|1774 image of a [[Fugitive slaves in the United States|fugitive slave]] in a New York newspaper, offering a $10 reward ({{Inflation|US|10|1774|fmt=eq}}). Slave owners, including [[George Washington]] and [[Thomas Jefferson]], placed around 200,000 runaway slave adverts in newspapers across the US before slavery ended in 1865.<ref name="Runaway">{{cite news |title=Runaway! How George Washington, Other Slave Owners Used Newspapers to Hunt Escaped Slaves |url=https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/10/runaway-how-george-washington-and-other-slave-owners-used-newspapers-to-hunt-escaped-slaves/ |access-date=August 30, 2022 |work=Library of Congress |archive-date=August 30, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220830181110/https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/10/runaway-how-george-washington-and-other-slave-owners-used-newspapers-to-hunt-escaped-slaves/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Fugitives"/>]]
In [[Louisiana (New Spain)|Spanish Louisiana]], although there was no movement toward abolition of the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called [[Coartación (slavery)|''coartación'']], which allowed slaves to buy their freedom, and that of others.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Berquist |first1=Emily |title=Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1765–1817 |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=June 2010 |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=181–205 |doi=10.1080/01440391003711073|s2cid=145434799 }}</ref> Although some did not have the money to do so, government measures on slavery enabled the existence of many free Blacks. This caused problems to the Spaniards with the [[French creoles]] (French who had settled in [[New France]]) who had also populated Spanish Louisiana. The French creoles cited that measure as one of the system's worst elements.<ref name="louisiana">{{citation|url=https://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/slavery-in-spanish-colonial-louisiana|publisher=knowlouisiana.org|title=Slavery in Spanish Colonial Louisiana|access-date=July 21, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180721134124/https://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/slavery-in-spanish-colonial-louisiana|archive-date=July 21, 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref>

First established in South Carolina in 1704, groups of armed White men—[[slave patrol]]s—were formed to monitor enslaved Black people.<ref name="Patrols"/> Their function was to police slaves, especially fugitives. Slave owners feared that slaves might organize revolts or [[slave rebellion]]s, so state militias were formed to provide a military command structure and discipline within the slave patrols. These patrols were used to detect, encounter, and crush any organized slave meetings which might lead to revolts or [[rebellion]]s.<ref name="Patrols">{{cite web|date=July 10, 2019|title=Slave Patrols: An Early Form of American Policing|url=https://lawenforcementmuseum.org/2019/07/10/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing/|access-date=June 16, 2020|website=National Law Enforcement Museum|language=en-US|archive-date=June 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200609091807/https://lawenforcementmuseum.org/2019/07/10/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing/|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The earliest African American congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following the [[First Great Awakening|Great Awakening]]. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the [[Thirteen Colonies|American colonies]], which made them the second largest ethnic group after [[English Americans]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.dalhousielodge.org/Thesis/scotstonc.htm|title=Scots to Colonial North Carolina Before 1775|publisher=Dalhousielodge.org|date=n.d.|access-date=April 20, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120219045151/http://www.dalhousielodge.org/Thesis/scotstonc.htm|archive-date=February 19, 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref>