Enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas as early as 1502, alongside conquistadors.

Evidence

In the beginning, that is, most probably in the decade that ended the fifteenth century but most certainly in the one that began the sixteenth, small groups of enslaved Africans had come to the New World as “companions” of the conquistadors. When Nicolas de Ovando took up his governorship of Hispaniola in 1502, his company included “an unknown number of black and mulatto servitors.” They were ladinos, Hispanicized Blacks, but within the year Ovando requested of his queen that she prevent all future arrivals of such people. … He reported that those already on the island had been a source of scandal to the Indians, and some had fled their owners and established, independent settlements in the mountains. Concerned that the Indians might be led from the path of Christian righteousness, Isabella immediately barred the shipment of ladinos. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 636

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the earliest documented Black presence and resistance in the New World, anchoring the origin date of the Black radical tradition the reader is tracing.