Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

Although little remembered today, Leidesdorff was a social, economic and political force in pre-gold rush San Francisco, with a number of “firsts” credited to his name. When he was named the U.S. Vice Consul to Mexico in 1845, he became the nation’s first African American diplomat.   He was elected to San Francisco’s first city council and its first school board in 1847.  He built the first hotel, the first shipping warehouse, he operated the first steamboat on San Francisco Bay, and he laid out the first horse race track in California. Born on the island of St. Croix in the Danish West Indies in 1810, William was the son of Danish sugar planter Alexander Leidesdorff and Anna Marie Sparks, a light-skinned woman of mixed race ancestry.  In 1841 Leidesdorff sailed his 106-ton schooner  Julia Ann  around Cape Horn to California and settled in the Mexican village of Yerba Buena on San Francisco Bay.  Over the next three years he became a succes...

Beginning of African Enslavement In the English Colonies and the USA John Punch is one of the first servants on record to be sentenced to slavery on the grounds of race in what we now call the USA. In other words, this was the beginning of African enslavement in the English colonies and subsequently the USA. Punch was a servant of the Virginia planter Hugh Gwyn, a wealthy landowner, a justice and one of the few members of the House of Burgesses, representing Charles River  County (which would become York County in 1642). In 1640, Punch ran away to Maryland with two European indentured servants of Gwyn. The three men were returned to Virginia and on 9 July, the Virginia Governor's Council, which served as the colony's highest court, sentenced the two Europeans to have their terms of indenture extended by four years each, but they sentenced Punch to a life of servitude. In addition, the council sentenced the three men to thirty lashes each. Wikipedia