Even more, knowing that some of the Black people who came to the Americas with the Spanish went off on their own to lead expeditions of conquest in Mexico, Central, and South America would have altered the framework for viewing people of African descent in the New World. Not to place conquering in a good light, but seeing Africans in America who were out of the strict confines of the plantation—and seeing them presented as something other than the metaphorical creation of English people—would have pushed back against the narrative of inherent limitation. Africans were all over the world, doing
...more