Formal decree offering freedom for conversion

Fort Mose was the first officially sanctioned settlement for free Black people in what’s now the United States. It was established as a place where people who escaped enslavement in the U.S. could live in the Spanish territory of Florida.

Research:

• Blumetti, Jordan. “The First Floridians.” The Bitter Southerner. https://bittersoutherner.com/the-first-floridians-fort-mose-st-augustine
• Cancio-Donlebún Ballvé, J. Á. (2021). The King of Spain’s Slaves in St. Augustine, Florida (1580–1618). Estudios del Observatorio / Observatorio Studies, 74, pp. 1-81. https://cervantesobservatorio.fas.harvard.edu/en/reports
• curtis, Marcus. “Fort Mose: Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.” 3/2/2022. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2f5446036d2d4e109439baade4e1f4e7
• Dunlop, J.G. “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida.” The American Historical Review , Feb., 1990, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Feb., 1990). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2162952
• org. “Francisco Menéndez.” https://enslaved.org/fullStory/16-23-92885/
• Florida Frontiers. “Fort Mose: America’s First Free Black Community.” 12/11/2016. https://www.pbs.org/video/florida-frontiers-fort-mose-americas-first-free-black-community/
• Florida Museum. “Fort Mose.” https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/research/st-augustine/fort-mose/
• Fort Mose Historical Society. “The Fort Mose Story.” https://fortmose.org/about-fort-mose/
• Halbirt, Carl D. “La Ciudad de San Agustín: A European Fighting Presidio in Eighteenth-Century ‘La Florida.’” Historical Archaeology , 2004, Vol. 38, No. 3, Presidios of the North American Spanish Borderlands (2004). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25617179
• Hurston, Zora Neale and John R. Lynch. “The Journal of Negro History , Oct., 1927, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct., 1927). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714042
• Landers, Jane. “Black Frontier Settlements in Spanish Colonial Florida.” OAH Magazine of History , Spring, 1988, Vol. 3, No. 2, The Frontier (Spring, 1988). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25162596
• Landers, Jane. “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida.” The American Historical Review , Feb., 1990, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Feb., 1990). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2162952
• Landers, Jane. “The Atlantic Transformations of Francisco Menéndez.” From Biography and the Black Atlantic. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2014.
• MacMahon, Darcie and Kathleen Deagan. “Legacy of Fort Mose.” Archaeology , September/October 1996, Vol. 49, No. 5 (September/October 1996). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41771187
• Proenza-Coles, Christina. “Freedom Seekers.” Lapham’s Quarterly. 3/19/2019. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/freedom-seekers
• Wasserman, Adam. “Forming a nation: the free black settlement at Fort Mose.” From A People’s History of Florida. Via Libcom.org.6/28/2009. https://libcom.org/article/forming-nation-free-black-settlement-fort-mose
• Weiss, Daniel. “Freedom Fort.” Archaeology. Mar/Apr2024, Vol. 77 Issue 2, p36-41.

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