THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN HISTORY

"Sir John Hawkins made three trips to America from the West Coast of Africa between 1563 and 1567, taking with him several hundred of the natives whom he sold as slaves. Queen Elizabeth became a partner in this nefarious trade. So elated was she at its profits that she knighted him, and he most happily selected for his crest a Negro head and bust with arms tightly pinioned. It was a lucrative business and though it at first shocked the sensibilities of Christian nations and rulers, they soon reconciled themselves not only to the traffic , but introduced the servitude as part of the economic system of their dependencies in America. That it became a fixture after its introduction in these colonies was due to the prerogative of the Home Government rather than to the importunities of the colonists, especially because it was a source of revenue for the Crown." P.2-3, THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN HISTORY by John Wesley Cromwell (1914)