Ric Murphy

A slim well researched volume of the the arrival of the the first Africans aboard the English ship White Lion in the English colony of Virginia on August 25, 1619. The documentation to support the telling of this event is plentiful and well documented in this text by Ric Murphy. It is an important edition to the history of importation of Africans to English America. It stands well as a historical precursor to the W.E.B. Dubois' discussion of the English Slave trade and its Suppression in his 1896 monograph, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870. The players and their motivations behind this event are laid out plainly and give further support to the idea that forced labor by Africans on English-American soil began in 1619 as set forth in Nikole-Hannah Jones' 1619 Project. Interestingly, Murphy's discussion of the early English settlers in Virginia echoes those referenced by Nancy Isenberg in her White Trash The 400-year Untold History of Class in America. The book should dispel the notion that the the first Africans to reach US shores were uneducated backwards savages with no notable skills other than the ability to perform manual labor.… (meer)