This post accompanies “Virginia, 1619,” episode 250 of Ben Franklin’s World.
In this week’s special episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Liz Covart talks with Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Norfolk State University and an expert in African-American and American history, about the lasting impact of the events of 1619 in Virginia during this 400th anniversary year.
We hope the episode leaves you eager to learn more about the history of the Virginia colony, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and how Americans and historians think about those issues today. We’ve therefore compiled—with assistance from Dr. Newby-Alexander—some additional reading that would be of interest, as well as a bonus audio clip from Ben Franklin’s World.
Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans, Indians and Their Shared History, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Nancy Egloff and Bly Staube, “’Master Pories parlement business’—The Proceedings of the First General Assembly of Virginia, July 1619 by John Pory”, Jamestown’s History is Fun Blog, July 3rd, 2019.
Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
James Horn, 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 2018).
Joseph Kelly, Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught between Cultures in Early Virginia (New York: New York University Press, 2019).
Jennifer Potter, The Jamestown Brides: The Story of England’s “Maids for Virginia” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Martha W. McCartney, “New Light on Virginia’s First Documented Africans,” Jametown’s History is Fun Blog, March 1st, 2019.
Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall, and James Horn, eds., Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America (Chapel Hill: OIEAHC, University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
John Thornton, Africa and Africans in Making the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).