Links Between Africa and America
The Mission of Project 1619 Inc. is to promote the arrival and history of the FIRST Enslaved Africans captured and brought to ENGLISH North America in 1619. These first Africans would usher in an era that was the beginning of slavery in America as we know it today. William Tucker, baptized on January 3, 1624 was the first documented child of African descent born in English North America.
“History cannot be changed, only misinterpreted." -Calvin Pearson
God created man in his likeness with hair like wool. Many people do not want to admit that Blacks were the first people on planet Earth and from that beginning all other civilizations evolved. Scientists have proven through a study called Mitochondria Eve that Black people were here first with the Mitochondria DNA/RNA. When we think about the indigenous people of North America we think of people Columbus called Indians. If you research the records of the older tribes such as the Washitaw, Yammasse, Lenape, Creek, and newer tribes Shoshoni, Seminole and Iriqous, they say that Blacks were the Black Mound Builders and they were descendants of Black People including the Mayan and Zu-Aztec coming from the Toltecs or Olmecs. In 1996 people of the Washitaw nation were recognized as the oldest indigenous people in America and they are Black people with wooly hair who link their ancestors to the Olmecs.
This is not an Afrocentrist view, but is based on scientific evidence.
Some researchers claim that humans have been here for 20,000 years.
In his book, “They Came Before Columbus”, author Ivan Van Sertima documents that the earliest artifacts supporting the theory that Black people were here first date back to 1200 BC in present day Mexico.
St. Augustine, Florida is considered the Oldest European city in North America. When the Spanish conquistador Pedro Menendez founded St. Augustine in 1565, not only were there black members of his crew, but he noted that his arrival had been preceded by free Africans in the French settlement at Fort Caroline. Estevanico, an African slave traveled with Dorantes to Hispaniola and Cuba with Pánfilo de Narváez’s ill-fated expedition of 1527 to colonize Florida and the Gulf Coast. Estevanico became the first person from Africa known to have set foot in the present continental United States. But these were Spanish and French Settlements. America became an English then British Colony with the settlement of Jamestown in Virginia in 1607.
Juan las Canarias, a Black sailor, served on Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria to the New World.
St. Augustine says the first birth of a black child was there in 1606, a Spanish Colony. The claim of Project 1619 Inc. is that William Tucker is the first African child born in English North America.
Florida was ceded to the United States by Spain in the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty, ratification of the treaty took place in 1821, and it officially became a U.S. possession as the Florida Territory in 1822. Florida gained statehood in 1845, 238 years after the English Settlers landed at Jamestown.
Note from the Founder & President of Project 1619, Inc., Calvin Pearson:
Project 1619 Inc. supports our African ancestry and does not want to diminish the pride and culture that others share in their cities' history. In 2019 North America commemorated the capture and arrival of the first Africans brought to English America. They arrived in August 1619 at Point Comfort, today’s Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia.
We are proud of our heritage and culture and the impact it has played on building the greatest democracy in the world.
We invite you to visit Hampton, where slavery began and ended.
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