At least once in the thread the year 1619 has been mentioned. I happen to be at the point in Wilkerson's book where she talks about 1619. I can't copy-type all that she says, but in August 1619 a settler John Rolfe makes "the oldest surviving reference to Africans in the English colonies in America, people who looked different from the colonists and who would ultimately be assigned by law to the bottom of an emerging caste system. Rolfe mentions them as merchandise . . . The ship 'brought not anything but 20 and odd Negroes . . . which the Governor and Cape Merchant bought for victualles.'
"Historians do not agree on what their status was . . . .
"With the first rough attempts at a colonial census, conducted in Virginia in 1630, a hierarchy began to form. Few Africans were seen as significant enough to be listed in the census by name . . . The Africans were not cited by age or arrival date as were the Europeans, information vital to setting the terms and time frame of indenture for Europeans, or for Africans, had they been in the same category, been seen as equal, or seen as needing to be accurately accounted for.
"Thus, before there was a United States of America, there was the caste system, born in colonial Virginia. At first, religion, not race as we now know it, defined the status of people in the colonies. Christianity, as a proxy for Europeans, generally exempted European workers from lifetime enslavement. This initial distinction is what condemned, first, indigenous people, and, then, Africans, most of whom were not Christian upon arrival, to the lowest rung of an emerging hierarchy before the concept of race had congealed to justify their eventual and total debasement."
That is Wilkerson's take on 1619. HTH
Peace,
Michael