'20 And Odd. Negroes'

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2019

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In August of 1619, a British ship landed near Jamestown, Virginia with dozens of enslaved Africans — the first black people in the colonies that would be come the United States. Four hundred years later, some African Americans are still looking to Jamestown in search of home and a lost history.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Have you been a Ghana before?
0:02.0	Never been to Africa.
0:04.0	And that's what's exciting me, the fact that we're going to get a chance to go and see our
0:11.0	people and honor our ancestors. Such a wonderful idea.
0:16.0	You're listening to Coast Switch from MPR. I'm Jean Demby.
0:20.0	And I'm Shireen Madisal Miraji. It was 400 years ago this month that a ship arrived
0:27.0	in a small British colony in Virginia.
0:30.0	John Rolf, a businessman at the Jamestown settlement, you may recognize his name from the
0:34.7	story of Pocahontas.
0:36.7	Said at the time that the ship was unremarkable, carrying nothing but, and I'm quoting here,
0:44.0	20 and odd Negroes.
0:47.0	Those 20 and odd Negroes were the first enslaved Africans in the British colonies that would
0:53.0	become the United States. They would of course be followed in bondage by hundreds of thousands
0:58.0	more.
0:59.0	We're going to talk about the significance of 1619. But to start our episode, Chorene, I want
1:04.5	to introduce you to a bunch of black folks who in 2019 were making their own transatlantic
1:10.0	voyage, obviously this time of their own volition. And in reverse, they're going from Jamestown,
1:15.5	Virginia to the Jamestown district in a Crogana. And it's part of a trip put on by the NAACP.
1:22.0	It's very exciting about going to Africa.
1:24.0	All right, it's loud where you are. Set the scene for me.
1:27.0	Okay, so we're in this crowded lobby in downtown DC. It's about 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning,
1:31.0	just really, really early. But you can hear a couple hundred people, they're just standing
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.