This is the place where you could wake up any day and have your children sold away from you.

This was the place where the domestic slave trade worked like a cancer throughout the entire society for decade after decade.

I'm Celeste Headley, and this is Following Harriet,

a podcast about a woman who did the remarkable

at a time that was filled with the unthinkable.

And it all started here in Virginia

at a place called Point Comfort

that came to symbolize anything but comfort.

We're standing at Fort Monroe, and the location historically would have actually been Point Comfort shortly after English settlers had established a successful settlement at Jamestown.

Yulah Dance is the chief of resources management at Colonial National Historical Park.

Point Comfort served as the port, so as goods are coming and going, it was the

location where all of those arrivals were documented and reported back to England. John Ralph

was assigned that task, and he noted in late August of 1619, 20 and odd Africans who had arrived and were traded for food.

And so this particular history notes the arrival of Africans to the English colonies.

This wasn't the beginning of slavery. It wasn't even the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade,

because the Portuguese had been transporting captive Africans to Veracruz, Mexico, and the Caribbean

for a while. But it was the start of slavery in what would become the United States of America.

You know, Virginia, at points in its history, has liked to imagine that it was not really southern,

not really the place that embodied what we think of is the horrors of slavery.

But unfortunately, in many ways, Virginia would have been the place where slavery was at its worst.

Ed Ayers is a humanities professor and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond.

He's also co-hosted the podcast, Backstory, with the American History Guys.

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