Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
Let us speak boldly today with clarity and purpose. The story of African contributions to history is vast and profound, reaching every corner of the earth and challenging the ahistorical narratives that some have sought to impose. Our African ancestors spread across the globe before the tides of colonization reshaped the world. They founded civilizations, built empires, and advanced knowledge that became the bedrock of human progress.
When European powers began their domination of the Americas, they did so not with an immediate vision of enslaving African people but with other ambitions. Spain landed in Florida in 1513, over 510 years ago, and England followed in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. These moments mark the dawn of a transformative and often tragic era. It is crucial to understand Virginia’s colonial government was initially adhering to English law, which rejected slavery on sovereign soil, and the colonial legislature was bicameral, with the British imperial government as the upper house when the first Africans arrived on their shores.
These first 19 Africans brought to Virginia in 1619 were indentured servants, not slaves by law. They lived under the same system as the white Europeans, working to earn freedom. Their children, if born in the American colonies, were free-born English subjects, bearing British ethnicity as their birthright. This was not a system of bondage but of shared humanity, however flawed it may have been in its execution.
The African lineage of England’s royals dismantles the myth of a homogeneously white England. Queen Philippa of Hainault, wife of King Edward III in the 14th century, was described as having brown skin and Afrocentric features, including kinky hair, fuller lips, and a broader nose. A beloved queen, she was a patron of the arts and mother to Edward, the famed Black Prince. This celebrated military leader, renowned for his victories during the Hundred Years’ War, proudly embodied his African heritage, though he did not ascend to the throne.
Centuries later, King James I, who ruled from 1603 to 1625, was noted for his ruddy complexion. His grandson, King Charles II, reigning from 1660 to 1685, had dark skin, eyes, and hair, earning him the nickname “Black Boy” from his mother, Queen Henrietta Maria. Similarly, Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of King George III, who reigned from 1761 to 1818, was derisively referred to as the “Mulatto Queen” due to her perceived African ancestry. Despite the racialized slurs of her era, Queen Charlotte reigned for six decades during the turbulent years of the American Revolution, solidifying her legacy as one of Britain’s most enduring monarchs.
These figures—Queen Philippa, the Black Prince, King Charles II, and Queen Charlotte—reveal a history of royal diversity that challenges long-held narratives and reshapes the understanding of England’s past. They remind us that blackness has always been present, even at the pinnacle of power in the British Kingdom. Their stories challenge the myths of racial inferiority and demand that we see diversity for what it truly is—complex and interconnected.
The origins of race and the status of “slave” during colonial times were extralegal, and we must dismantle the narrative that colonial slave codes and Negro laws legalized colonial American slavery. We must reclaim the truth that the British Imperial government abolished colonial slave codes and Negro laws in 1766. To claim that black slavery proves racial inferiority in England is not only false, but it is deeply unhinged—a perversion born of racist white supremacy. Such a twisted ideology ignores both science and history. It demands that we erase the truths about race, slavery, and its extralegal origin in colonial America.
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