From the Office of Education study guide:

THE NEGRO We have brought . . . a gift of story and song; . . . the gift of sweat and brawn ... and a gift of the spirit . . . —W. E. B. Du Bois.

THE Negro came to the New World long before he was brought here against his will to labor on our tobacco plantations. This should always be kept in mind when we consider the important part which the Negro has played in American life. Negro Explorers. The pilot of one of the three ships which Columbus sailed to the New World is said to have been Pedro Alonzo, a Negro. There were thirty Negroes with Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean. There were Negroes with Cortés in his conquest of Mexico. There were Negroes, too, with the explorers who came to Guatemala, Chile, Venezuela, and Peru. They came with the Spaniard, Allyon, when he marched northward from Florida to Virginia in 1526. They came with Cabeza de Vaca through the Southwest. They were also with Coronado in 1540 when he marched in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola. When the French explorers, Cartier and Champlain, came to the valley of the St. Lawrence, Negroes came with them. During the seventeenth century, Negroes traveled down the Mississippi with different explorers. Many of them settled in Louisiana.

In 1619, one year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, twenty Negroes were brought to Jamestown, Virginia. These, after serving a number of years as indentured servants, became free men. Gradually, more Negroes came to the Colonies. They came to Massachusetts in 1636, to Pennsylvania in 1639, and to the New Netherlands in 1650. Traffic in Slaves. Although the Quakers had protested against using human beings as slaves, yet the practice of slavery was generally followed in the Colonies by the close of the seventeenth century. There had been no great traffic in slaves up to this time, but, as the tobacco trade increased and there was a shortage of workers, the colonists gladly purchased the Negro slaves who were brought in. This gave rise to the profitable slave trade in which the English, Netherlanders, Portuguese, and others took part. Slavery had long been a practice in Portugal and Spain on a small scale. Now, however, the world was to see the wholesale transplanting of a people, the like of which had never been seen before. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, there were more than 750,000 Negroes in the United States. Many of these played an heroic part in the conflict. Chrispus Attucks, a Negro, was the first colonial soldier to lose his life. New Freedom. During the nineteenth century, the Negro played a most important part in the prosperity of our country. Largely because of his labor on the cotton, tobacco, and sugar plantations, the United States became more and more important in world affairs. During the War between the States, while their masters were fighting the cause of the South, the southern Negroes faithfully went on with their work.

Following the War, the Negroes found it difficult to get used to their new freedom. . Most of them were unprepared for it. Partly because of this and partly because of the distress caused by the War, the majority of them suffered greatly. - With the development of American industries, there arose a great demand for cheap labor, and a new era dawned for the Negro. His greatest opportunity for improving himself did not come until the World War. Then, thousands moved from the agricultural South to the lumber camps, mines, mills, and railroad shops of the North. Negro Gifts. To the United States, the Negroes have brought a "rich sense of humor, a simple trusting religion, and a philosophy of life." These have kept them cheerful and hopeful through all kinds of setbacks. Their folk tales, folk songs, and spirituals have been a gift to the world as well as to the United States. Such inventions as those by Matzeliger, Banneker, McCoy, and others bear witness to their inventive genius. In spite of many handicaps, the Negroes have produced such famous men as Booker T. Washington, educator and author, and George Washington Carver, the scientist. A study of the gifts which have been laid on the altar of America will show that the Negro genius has burned brightly in many fields.

WNYC archives id: 125524