African Americans in Virginia
racial group in the US state
African Americans are the largest racial minority in Virginia. According to the 2010 Census, more than 1.5 million, or one in five Virginians is "Black or African American". African Americans were enslaved in the state. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, African Americans were 18.6% of the state's population and 3 of the 95 counties in Virginia are African American majority (Brunswick at 54.09%, Greensville at 58.08%, and Sussex at 53.25%).
History
Native Americans were enslaved by the Spanish before the arrival of British colonists and African American slaves.
The first twenty African slaves from Angola landed in Virginia in 1619 on a Portuguese slave ship. Lynchings, racial segregation and white supremacy were prevalent in Virginia. The first African slaves arrived in the British colony Jamestown, Virginia and were then bought by English colonists.
Virginia's initial African American slaves reached Point Comfort, located at the southern end of the Virginia peninsula, in August 1619. There, "20 and odd Negroes" or more from the English vessel White Lion were traded for provisions, and some were subsequently taken to Jamestown, where they were sold once more.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “African Americans in Virginia” as racial group in the US state. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as racial group in the US state. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q108083444. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2020 and 1619.
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This entry incorporates text from “African Americans in Virginia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.