By Courtland Milloy
Wednesday, September 6, 2006

"There came . . . a Dutch man-of-warre that sold us 20 negars."

-- from the diary of John Rolfe, a tobacco farmer

in Jamestown, Va., in 1619

And so began slavery in America -- with the first 20 Africans being referred to with a word that retains its sting some 400 years and 30 million African Americans later.

As Jamestown begins a commemoration of its founding in 1607, this less-than-cheery subject poses a special challenge for party planners. Jamestown is distinguished as the first permanent English settlement in what would become the United States; but it was also the first to achieve what historian Paul Johnson called "self-sufficiency through the sweat and pain of an enslaved race."

Can such an epic injustice ever be part of a celebration?

On Oct. 14, the Virginia African American Forum will be among the first to try with an anniversary gala at the Jamestown Settlement museum. Guests will be treated to a jazz ensemble and a preview of a new collection of African artifacts. They will also be given a choice of dress: "After 5 or African attire," allowing them to identify symbolically with the painful past. Or not.

The museum exhibit, on the other hand, may not offer such an easy out. A group of transatlantic researchers has finally put a face on those anonymous 20. And as more is learned about how their stories began, there will be no escaping the pain of their tragic end. The slaves were from Angola, in Southwest Africa. Their homelands were the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kongo, regions of modern-day Angola and coastal areas of Congo. They were entrepreneurs, a literate and morally upright people who held family in the highest regard. They were renowned for preparing their children for adulthood -- and the tradition persisted even after the slave ships began to arrive.

Thanks to the researchers, what had been a central feature of slavery -- the dehumanization of the black slave -- has finally been personalized for the first of the millions who would follow.

Nevertheless, by what appears to be the mutual consent of blacks and whites, the horrors of slavery are rarely confronted head-on in public settings. In fact, the effects of this "peculiar institution" are more likely to be minimized. It is often noted, for instance, that those first Africans were actually indentured servants, not free but not slaves, and, theoretically, as eligible as white servants to work themselves out of servitude. But if black sharecroppers could not work off a perpetual debt in the 20th-century version of indentured servitude, what chances did Africans forcibly brought here in the 17th century have?

At a recent fundraiser for the U.S. National Slavery Museum planned for Fredericksburg, organizers made sure that talk of this most unsavory practice did not leave a bad taste. "This museum will not have bad karma," Bill Cosby said at the event, which drew about 1,350 people. L. Douglas Wilder, mayor of Richmond, former Virginia governor and a driving force behind the museum, told The Post: "We are not interested in pointing a finger of blame."

But the psychological effects of slavery are not so easily dismissed. The generational echoes of oppression reverberate even today in the social crisis affecting many black families. And the same term of disrespect that Rolfe used to describe the slaves has never been more popular among black youth. The problem, of course, is not so much the use of the word as the internalization of its meaning: to eschew the freedom that comes with education and volunteer instead to enslave oneself with a minstrel-show mentality.

Slavery, if not the slavery museum, most certainly has bad karma.

Johnson, the historian, asks: "Can a nation rise above the injustices of its origins and, by its moral purpose and performance, atone for them? In the judgmental scales of history, such grievous wrongs must be balanced by the erection of a society dedicated to justice and fairness. Has the United States done this? Has it expiated its organic sins?"

America lost its soul in Jamestown. It's time to go searching again.

E-mail:milloyc@washpost.com