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My new book, the Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia has won the Phillis Wheatley Book Award …more
SPOTLIGHT
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Award winning author Ric Murphy, tells the extraordinary story of the arrival in 1619, of a group of thirty-two African men, women and children who arrived on the shores of Virginia. They had been kidnapped in the royal city of Kabasa, Angola, and forced aboard the Spanish slave ship the San Juan Bautista. The ship was attacked by privateers, and the captives were taken by the English to their New World colony. This group has been shrouded in controversy ever since. Historian Ric Murphy has documented a fascinating story of colonialism, treason, piracy, kidnapping, enslavement and English Common Law. The Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia is a must read.
From its origination, Arlington National Cemetery’s history has been compellingly intertwined with that of African Americans. This book explains how the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the home of Robert E. Lee and a plantation of the enslaved, became a military camp for Federal troops, a freedmen’s village and farm, and America’s most important burial ground. During the Civil War, the property served as a pauper’s cemetery for men too poor to be returned to their families, and some of the very first war dead to be buried there include over 1,500 men who served in the United States Colored Troops. More than 3,800 former slaves are interred in section 27, the property’s original cemetery. Section 27 and Freedman’s Village in Arlington National Cemetery: The African American History of America’s Most Hallowed Ground is a must read and should be added to your reading list.