Topic: slavery

Two ships, two Americas: the Mayflower, the White Lion and a nation's origin story

• Almost everyone knows the Mayflower, which carried the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620.
• Far fewer know the White Lion, which a year earlier brought the first enslaved Africans to English North America.
• As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, a new book uses these two vessels to tell a fuller, more contested story of how the country began — and of the competing ideas of America they came to represent.