It’s a safe bet that most people in the United States, when they think of it, believe that Black people first appeared in North America in 1619. The story of the “20. and odd negroes” that John Rolfe announced, in matter of fact fashion, to have arrived in Virginia that year is often taken as the beginning of what we might call “Black America”—from that twenty, to 4 million—by the time of Emancipation in 1865—to nearly 40 million today.
