This month marks The 500th anniversary of the arrival of the first recorded enslaved Africans to what is now Winyah Bay near what would eventually become the city of Georgetown, SC—where or museum is located. Less than 35 years after Christopher Columbus’s first voyage, the actions of Spanish colonists incited what was perhaps one of the earliest rebellions of enslaved Africans anywhere in the New World, writes historian Daniel C. Littlefield, PhD, in the forward for “Yes, Lord, I Know the Road: A Documentary History of African Americans in South Carolina, 1526 - 2008.” Much is made of 1619 as being the arrival of enslaved Africans, but that was to English North America. In September 1526 there was what would became San Miguel de Gualdape—a short-lived colony of about 600 people was in Spanish North America. The colony included sailors, Spanish colonists (including women and children), several priests, enslaved indigenous people, and some 100 of the first African people documented to be brought to this land—taken either directly from West Africa or through the brutal slave markets of the Caribbean. The expedition was led by Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, who had permission from the Spanish crown to establish a colony in North America. But the leading ship smashed into a shoal, an underwater sandbank, becoming grounded on the shifting sands that makes parts of Winyah Bay a nightmare to navigate. Supplies were now scarce due to the loss of the flagship and its cargo in the shallows of Winyah Bay. The wreck was an omen of the unraveling to come. After abandoning an attempt to create “New Andalusia’s” first settlement, the colonists traveled south along the coast to try again. Scholars place San Miguel de Gualdape at various sites along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, but only an archaeological discovery will resolve this debate. (We’re going with the colony moving south along the South Carolina coast to Beaufort and Port Royal Sound area.) In these harsh conditions, the colonists soon began to sicken and die. De Ayllon was among those who perished. After his death, some of the Spaniards mutinied and imprisoned the town’s authorities. The Africans set fire to the leader’s house, and they killed some colonists. By mid-November 1526 the colonists had abandoned San Miguel de Gualdape. Of the expedition’s initial 600 participants, only 150 survived. This doomed expedition predates the arrival of the first recorded enslaved Africans in Point Comfort, Virginia, in English North America by nearly 100 years, and the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Mass., by 94 years. Modern historians have identified between 250 and 313 total uprisings and planned conspiracies spanning from the colonial era through the Civil War in the continental U.S. And the first—and perhaps only successful one on what is now U.S. soil—was by the African freedom seekers of the San Miguel de Gualdape settlement. There is no record of what happened to the Africans. We do know that they weren’t included in the ship’s manifest for the return trip back to Spain. They may have lived with the indigenous people or started a maroon community of their own. Sources: zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/… uscpress.com/Yes-Lord-I-Know… statehousereport.com/2016/03… postandcourier.com/georgetow… gilderlehrman.org/ap-african…