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The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute launched First Blacks in the Americas / Los Primeros Negros en las Américas, a new academic and educational digital platform presenting the story of the first black-African inhabitants to arrive in the Americas after Christopher Colombus’ 1492 expedition across the Atlantic. First Blacks in the Americas (available in English and Spanish) is formed at its core by a collection of seventy-one archival document packages. The documents contain an equal number of manuscripts from sixteenth-century La Española (today’s Dominican Republic and Republic of Haiti). The selected documents mention in different ways the presence of the black-African population and their descendants that lived in the island-colony (the first European outpost in the Americas of modern times) during the first one hundred years of colonization. The site is the first platform to make this kind of collection of sources available on the internet to the larger public.
Each of the documents in First Blacks in the Americas is accompanied by: 1 ) a paleographic transcription (an exact version of the manuscript typed in modern characters); 2) a translation into English; 3) a comment extracted from current historiography to provide some historical context, and; 4) a double image of the manuscript side-by-side with the transcription for those interested in a more in-depth study of these historical sources. Besides these, the website also features a series of descriptive overviews about different aspects of the lives of blacks in La Española, like how this population arrived, their demographics, their contribution to the economy, their experiences of enslavement and resistance, and the contributions of black women, all based on prior scholarship.
The platform includes several unique features, including an extensive collection of maps of La Española drawn and used in the 1500s, a glossary to facilitate the reading of the Spanish language used during the time when the documents were written, and a large collection of photographs of historical sites from colonial times of the Dominican Republic, many of them reflecting deep rural areas (rarely visited, and rather forgotten). In addition, the website includes a collection of videos on contemporary Afro-Dominican culture and a bibliography for further reading. Finally, the site provides the user with an ample set of links to other websites that focus on the black-African diaspora and the black historical experience in subsequent centuries.
For more information, please visit the website at www.firstblacks.org in English and at www.primerosnegros.org in Spanish.
Sarah Aponte, CUNY Dominican Studies Institute’s Chief Librarian and Associate Professor Anthony Stevens-Acevedo, CUNY Dominican Studies Institute’s Assistant Director
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