• Africans were in the Americas centuries before Columbus and the “slave trade,” as shown by scholars like Ivan van Sertima and Leo Weiner. Some evidence suggests an early African presence in Florida.

• Africans were with the first European explorers and settlers of Florida, fully a half century before Jamestown, Virginia.

• While the Southern colonies, and later Southern states of the U.S. were dominated by plantation slavery, Florida was Spanish territory and “Freedom Land” for Africans escaping enslavement and Native peoples escaping European encroachment on their lands.

• Many Africans escaped slavery by sea. Of these, large numbers joined pirate ships, which were known for excercising “complete integration and complete democracy.”

• Among the most legendary of pirates was Black Caesar, who operated in South Florida waters.

• The first invasion of a foreign country by the U.S. was the incursions into Florida which became known as the Seminole wars.
 • Both the words “Seminoles” and “Maroons” are derived from the Spanish word “cimarrones,” which was used for livestock which escaped into the wild. “Cimarrones” became “Siminoli” in the Creek Indian language, and then “Seminole” in English.
• “The Seminoles were a people, not a tribe,” consisting of numerous Native groups and Africans. Black Seminoles were especially valuable as interpreters, since they knew both European and Native languages.
• The Seminole Wars were the costliest in U.S. history, in both money and bloodshed, until the Viet Nam War.
• The main goal of the Seminole Wars was not to “fight Indians,” to recapture the “property” of Southern slave owners and prevent further escapes.
• One of the most important sites of the Second Seminole War was the 1838 Loxahatchee River Battlefield in northern Palm Beach County, Florida, where Black and Native Seminoles, outnumbered and outgunned, fought bravely for  their freedom, until they were captured by U.S. forces, dishonorably, under a flag of truce, and marched on the Trail of Tears to Tampa, shipped to east Texas, and marched to Oklahoma.

Resources courtesy of
Dinzulu Tinnie

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