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1619 CE was selected as the starting point in reference to enslaved Afrikans supposedly arriving at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia as referenced on numerous Government of Ghana websites for 2019’s Year of Return. In this article, we
will use various primary and scholarly sources to interrogate “white” epistemologies and anglocentric frames of reference of using 1619 CE as a starting point for
anti-Black enslavement while challenging biblical parallels and references to 400
years (Brauchle in Virginia changing marker denoting where first Africans arrived
in 1619, Web: dailypress.com, 2015). Using an Afrikan-centered analysis, we argue
that the arbitrary selection of the anglocentric date of 1619 CE cannot be at the
center of any narrative told from the perspective of Afrikan=Black people lest we
erase the memory of hundreds of thousands of Afrikan ancestors enslaved prior to
that time in what would eventually become the continental USA and elsewhere.
