Self-Liberation from the Beginning
Film screenings of the heroic saga of thousands of people who liberated themselves from enslavement in the American hemisphere will launch activities of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend in Palm Beach County with a two--day Mini Film Festival and art exhibit presented under the theme, “Marronage in the Americas,” on Friday and Saturday, January 16-17 as part of annual Seminole Maroon Spiritual Remembrance which concludes on Sunday, January 18, in Jupiter.

The Mini-film fest, also held in recognition of the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, is slated to be held in the Meeting Room at Historic Tabernacle Church, 801 8th Street, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

This Annual Spiritual Commemoration, presented by Florida Black Historical Research Project, Inc. in cooperation with Loxahatchee Battlefield Preservationists and Palm Beach County Parks, concludes on Sunday, January 18, with cultural presentations beginning at 10 a.m. at Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park, 9060 Indiantown Rd. in Jupiter.

Called Maroons throughout North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, self-liberators were formerly enslaved Africans and indigenous people who, for over 400 years, from the 15th to 19th Centuries liberated themselves and established independent communities throughout the Americas and the Caribbean, including Florida.

Quilombo, A Film Classic
Dr. Aisha Finch, The award-winning author whose research focuses on slavery and the history of slave rebellions and marronage in the Caribbean, Latin America and the Atlantic World, is guest scholar for the Mini Film Festival which begins at 5:30 pm on Friday with Carlos Diegues’s acclaimed feature-length film, Quilombo, to be screened following an Opening Reception generously hosted by the Consulate General of Brazil.

Quilombo depicts the legendary story of Palmares, one of the largest and most successful Maroon settlements in the history of the hemisphere. Between 1605-1694 the settlement grew into a free African republic with as many as 20,000 inhabitants.

That dramatic offering from Brazil, the country with the largest African population outside of Africa, opens the way for a celluloid continuation on Saturday from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm at Tabernacle Church.

The Commonality of Hemispheric Marronage
Dr. Anthony Dixon is presenting a screening of Freedom Seekers: The Black Seminole Story- a treatment and Clare Vickery is slated to screen Through a Flowering Place, a creative documentary of Florida stories of six women. These screenings explore the stories of early Black and indigenous settlements in Florida both during and prior to statehood. Other screenings will focus on selected films from the Americas, exploring the fascinating common threads of the Maroon experience in locations as diverse as Panama, Jamaica, and Colombia, among others,

Sergio Giral’s Maluala
The Mini FilmFest concludes on Saturday evening, with a panel of filmmakers and keynote speaker Dr. Finch, author of the award-winning Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba, La Escalera [revolt] and the insurgencies of 1841-44.

Dr. Finch will introduce the feature-length presentation of Maluala, a film that explores the challenges faced by Maroons in Cuba, directed by the late Sergio Giral, known as “the father of Cuban Black cinema,”.

Volunteer hosts for the Film Festival are members of the African American Research Library and Cultural Center of Palm Beach County, whose director, 2025 African American Achievement Award winner Mrs. Annie Ruth Harrison, has aptly described the weekend as “an important event highlighting Black culture, offering the Palm Beach community an exciting opportunity for understanding the history of Black agency in the Americas and Florida.”

Relevant Artwork on Display
An added attraction will be a pop-up exhibition of new and recent original artworks by North Carolina-based Seminole Maroon-descendant artist Johnny Montgomery, whose trademark-style paintings vividly capture scenes of the historic Seminole Maroon experience in Florida and beyond.

Admission to both days’ events is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be shared.

The Larger Picture
In this milestone year of “America 250,” observing the semiquincentennial of the signing of the 1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence from British rule, the focus on the Maroon experience also commemorates the 500th anniversary year of the first European (Spanish) attempt to establish African slavery on the North American mainland in 1526.
This resulted in a revolt and escape to freedom, possibly amongst the local Indigenous Natives, fully 93 years before the much more widely known arrival of the first African captives in the English colony of Virginia in 1619; neither date is to be forgotten.

Our keynote presenter at the Park is historian Dale Cox, author of The Fort at Prospect Bluff. Mr. Cox is well-researched on Seminole communities in early Florida history.

We believe that the upcoming screenings and day of cultural offerings at the former Seminole Maroon village offer a wonderful opportunity to bring to light the historic significance of the Seminole Maroon struggle for freedom and the successful intercultural exchange that occurred on
Florida soil for over two centuries as First Nations Peoples and their descendants and Africans and their descendants bonded for survival in an environment of freedom, prosperity and hope.

The Mini Film Festival precedes the 188th Anniversary Annual Seminole Maroon Spiritual Remembrance of the two pivotal battles of January, 1838. events which finally turned the tide of the decades-long war against the combined Native and African American Seminoles in Florida in favor of the invading settlers.

The Spiritual Remembrance is held on Sunday, January 18, beginning at 10:00 am, with Battlefield tours beginning a 1:00 pm at the Loxahatchee River Battlefield in Riverbend Park, 9060 W. Indiantown Road in Jupiter. FL, one mile west of I-95 and Florida’s Turnpike.

The Sunday Remembrance stands out for its reliance on cultural sharing and historical presentations.

According to a Comanche proverb, “All who have died are equal”; in agreement with the spirit of that Indigenous wisdom, the Annual Remembrance honors the memory of ALL of the fallen, on all sides, including those before and after those whose lives were lost at the sacred site, including those Seminoles who, undefeated on the battlefield, were lured weeks later to Fort Jupiter under a flag of truce, only to be captured and deported on the deadly Trail of Tears to Oklahoma Territory, with some turned over to “slave catchers” as pretended “recaptured runaways.”

A Universal Story
The significance of the three-day event is much heightened by the fact that although the Maroon saga, if it is told at all, is commonly pigeonholed as “Black history,” sometimes with slight passing references to the role of the Indigenous peoples, it is in fact a timeless human story of courage and resistance to oppression and the universal human quest for justice, equality, and freedom, to which all are welcome.

For further information, please email info@fbhrpinc.org.