1520s

On December 26, 1522, approximately twenty enslaved Wolof Africans on the sugar plantation of Diego Columbus (son of Christopher Columbus) in Hispaniola rose in revolt, killing several Spaniards and attempting to ignite a broader uprising. The revolt was suppressed and the leaders executed. It is recognized as the first major slave revolt in the Americas. Spanish authorities responded by restricting the import of Wolof captives, whom they labeled as 'proud and disobedient,' but demand for labor prevented meaningful curtailment of the trade.

King Afonso I of the Kongo Kingdom (in present-day Angola and Congo) wrote a series of letters to King João III of Portugal in 1526, explicitly protesting the devastating effects of the slave trade on his kingdom. He described how Portuguese and African traders were kidnapping nobles, free people, and even children of noble families. He demanded Portugal stop the trade or strictly regulate it. His letters represent one of the most detailed and powerful contemporary African denunciations of the Atlantic slave trade. Portugal ignored his appeals. The Kongo Kingdom's population and political stability were steadily destroyed by the trade over the following centuries.

Estevanico (also called Esteban de Dorantes), an enslaved African man from Morocco, was among the survivors of the disastrous Narváez expedition to Florida (1527). He spent eight years traversing the continent from Florida to Mexico with Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, serving as healer, interpreter, and diplomat among indigenous communities. In 1539 he led an advance expedition toward the Seven Cities of Cibola into present-day Arizona and New Mexico, becoming the first African and the first person of non-indigenous origin to reach the American Southwest. He was killed by Zuni people near Hawikuh. His story reveals both African presence in early American exploration and the inescapable fact of his enslavement.

Spanish colonists bring enslaved Africans to San Miguel de Gualdape on the present-day Carolina/Georgia coast — decades before 1619.

The enslaved Africans at Gualdape revolt and flee to nearby Indigenous communities; the Spanish settlement collapses.