African slavery lacked the notion that whites were masters and blacks were slaves. By the start of the 16th century, almost 200,000 Africans had been transported to Europe and islands in the Atlantic.

It was not until 1662 that a law was passed to enslave people based on the status of their mothers, over four decades after the first Africans arrived in Virginia.

The Spanish took the first African captives to the Americas from Europe as early as 1503, and by 1518 the first captives were shipped directly from Africa to America.

Archaeologists have found what they think are the oldest remains of slaves brought from Africa to the New World. The remains, in a colonial era graveyard in one of the oldest European cities in ...

Taken by Portuguese slave traders, kidnapped by English pirates, and taken far from home, African arrivals to Virginia in 1619 marked the origins of U.S. slavery. Traditions EndurePainted in the ...

Advances in ship design and navigation enabled European traders to travel reliably to Africa. The Portuguese were the first to begin capturing Africans and taking them back to Europe as slaves.

The landing of the first Africans in English North America in 1619 was a turning point, but slavery was already part of U.S. history by then ...