The landing of the first Negroes

An engraving depicts three enslaved Africans newly arrived on the shores of Virginia. The first Africans disembarked at Point Comfort, on the James River, late in August 1619. This illustration was reproduced in S. G. Goodrich’s Pictorial History of the United States, a textbook published in Philadelphia in 1860.

The word "negro" or "Negro," which literally means "black" in Spanish and Portuguese, became the accepted English language term for people of African heritage from the eighteenth century until the late 1960s, when Black activists began to perceive "Negro" as a degrading term due to its association with slavery; shortly thereafter, the use of that word fell out of favor.