AFRICAN ROOTS AMERICAN LABOR

African Roots of American Labor It is worthy of remembrance that Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of Hispaniola in 1492 for Spain was made in quest of the East Indies. His landing in the West Indies, not in the East Indies, not only results in the ultra decimation of Arawak Indians, who, then, inhabited Hispaniola (Island of Haiti and Dominican Republic), but set off a demand for slave labor to mine for gold and silver in the "New World." The slave labor issue was settled early on when Spain's monarchs, Isabell and Ferdinand approved the colonial importation of the far more stable and robust Africans to do the heavy labor that destroyed the Arawaks and other "Indians." This royal decree had been elicited by a priest , Bartholomew Las Casas on humanitarian grounds in 1503, a mere 8 years after Columbus' find. Spain became fabulously wealthy by the ruthless conquest of Maya, Inca, other Indian civilizations in the 1500s. Her wealth excited the envy of others, Portugal and England. The Roman Catholic Church's Pope in 1493 had drawn a line of demarcation around the globe, adjusted by treaty in 1494, giving lands to the east to Portugal and the west to Spain, the two principal international, conquering, trading , Catholic proselytizing, seafaring active nations of Western Europe. Portugal got Brazil, east of the line, Spain got all else west of the line. But a line is just a line, even if it was drawn by a Catholic Pope, whose papal sovereignty was now lacking unanimity by some Western European nations, given Martin Luther's 1517 iconic "95 Theses" at Wittenberg. Moreover American colonies were entrepôts of the privileged, royal and rich merchants and adventurers with licenses and investment from them. Therefore slave laborers were needed to work, mine, exploit, hold the land from equally avaricious fellow Western European explorers, traders, colonies, conquerors, proselytizers, who were solicitous of the New World 's wealth also. England's Queen Elizabeth, notably, authorized her privateers to pirate, to prey upon Spanish treasure ships and Portuguese treasure ships to divert their riches to her own nation. After a historic battle of 1588, when smaller elusive English vessels out-shot, out-maneuvered Spain's ponderous Armada, a new master of the sea and trade was born. English pirate licenses known as "letters marque and reprisals" were incorporated into the current constitution of England's most wildly successful colony, United States of America, in Article I, Section 8. It was at her Jamestown, Virginia, colony that was saved from starvation by Angolan slaves recaptured from Portuguese slavers by English pirates in 1619. Those Angolan slaves of 1619 laid the foundation for millions more of Africa's finest , hardiest specimens of manhood and womanhood , who were also in Article I of the United States Constitution at Section 2. We proudly symbolize the root of American labor, free, slave, labor, unrequited, unappreciated in 2019.