Florida State Park Will Pay Homage to First Free Black Settlement in US

The first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in the United States — predating the Civil War by a century — will soon offer visitors a life-sized replica of the complex known as Fort Mose, which has been buried under earth and water on the Florida coast.

Sarah Enelow-Snyder describes the history and rediscovery of the fort in The Washington Post, writing, “An early iteration of the Underground Railroad in the 17th and 18th centuries brought enslaved people from English plantations in the Carolinas down to freedom at Fort Mose, which was controlled by Spanish settlers.”

After the first freedom seekers arrived in St. Augustine in 1687, more followed. Once the exodus of enslaved people began threatening the English economy to the north, the English attacked the fort multiple times, and it was eventually abandoned. “Starting in the 1980s, archaeologists uncovered the fort’s moat, clay-covered earth walls, and interior wooden buildings. They found artifacts including gun flints, flattened bullets, metal buckles, ceramics, glass bottles, burned seeds and bones from food sources.” The new replica will reimagine the fort as it would have looked when it was first built based on existing information and other Spanish forts.