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Nothing illustrates this better than the central events in the political history of the Negor. Contrary to the generally accepted idea, that history began not in slavery but in indentured servitude. The first black immigrants in English America landed at Jamestown in August, 1619. They came, these first black men and women, the same way many, perhaps most, of the first white men came--under duress and compulision. They found a system which permitted poor people to pay for their passage by working a stipulated number of years as indentured servants.

In Virginia, then, and in other colonies, the first black immigrants fell into a well=established socio-economic groove which carried with it no implications of racial inferiority, During this transitional period of 40 years or more, a period of primary importance in the history of America, the first black immigrants mingled with whites on a basis of substantial equality. Blacks and whites worked in the same fields, living in the same huts, and fraternized in the same places.

Some, perhaps most, of the first black immigrants worked out their term of indentured servitude and were freed. Within a short time, they were accumulating property, pounds and indentured servants. The record indicates that these black settlers were accorded substantially the same rights as freed whites. They voted in eleven of the thirteen original colonies. And some of them became the first black office-holders in America by filling the minor posts of beadle and surety.

All this changed dramatically with the opening of the New World and the introduction of sugar planting in the West Indies. This new situation created a demand for men that cound not be satisfied by the casual kidnapping of poor blacks in Africa and poor whites in Europe. Beginning around 1660, the leading men of the colonies passed laws that made black people servants for life. This was ^a fatal and perhaps irreparable break