Les Washington

Generations: a Commentary on the History of the African Immigrants and Their American Descendents Les Washington

The arrival of those twenty Africans, though they were not the first Africans in America, represented the vanguard of an institution and an industry that would, for 246 years, survive in the unkempt median lying between the merging lanes of the sociopolitical practices of the past and the oncoming traffic of advancing sociopolitical concepts of the future. Unlike the simple annotation in Rolfe's diary announcing the arrival of the 1619 Africans, the concept of advanced sociopolitical thinking arrived on the scene with the proverbial bang. Whereas Rolfe's announcement was a precursor to the institution of slavery, the new concept of natural individual rights was a precursor of its demise. Entering the sociopolitical spectrum from the lanes of evolving religious freedom, the notion of the natural rights of the individual was ultimately destined to clash with slavery's abject denial of such rights. The convergence of these two events, as though engaged in a turf war over morality, would, years later, crash into each other with the sound of cannon fire.