America's First Black Slaves: What Florida Won't Teach You
<p>With all respect to the 1619 Project, some of the first enslaved Black people to arrive in what is now the continental United States arrived in Florida in 1565. Florida wasn't one of the original colonies then, bouncing back and forth between France, England, and Spain once Europeans arrived. It wasn't until 1821 that Florida became part of the United States, but there were slaves all that time, <a href="https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20653/urlt/6-4.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">yet Florida barely mentions them</a>. They do teach that <a href="https://fortmose.org/about-fort-mose/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Fort Mose</a> became the first free Black community in the United States in 1738 (that happened under Spain, not the U.S.) but make no mention of enslaved people arriving in the first place.</p>
<h2><a href="https://medium.com/black-history-month-365/st-augustine-americas-oldest-city-604fdc693f7d?source=post_page-----b0159a3b9958--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">St Augustine: America's Oldest City</a></h2>
<h3><a href="https://medium.com/black-history-month-365/st-augustine-americas-oldest-city-604fdc693f7d?source=post_page-----b0159a3b9958--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">What They Don't Tell You In The Brochures</a></h3>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/black-history-month-365/st-augustine-americas-oldest-city-604fdc693f7d?source=post_page-----b0159a3b9958--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">medium.com</a></p>
<p>I earlier wrote that "some of the first Black slaves" arrived in 1565. African slaves arrived in Florida as early as 1513 when ships from Spain landed in Florida, which Columbus never did. The first known permanent slaves <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_colonization_of_the_Americas" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">arrived in 1526</a> in Florida and shortly after that in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Georgia#:~:text=The%20first%20enslaved%20Africans%20in,colony%20on%20the%20Carolina%20coast" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Georgia</a> and <a href="https://www.sciway.net/afam/slavery/indexs.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">South Carolina,</a> all well before 1619.</p>
<p>When Spaniard <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Men%C3%A9ndez_de_Avil%C3%A9s" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles</a> founded St. Augustine in 1565, he brought enslaved people with him. St. Augustine bills itself as America's oldest city. Visitors still tour the González-Alvarez House, the oldest surviving Spanish colonial dwelling in St. Augustine, Florida. The present home was constructed in the 1700s, but the site had been occupied a century before. Tour guides mention "the young boys" who would catch fish and gather firewood. It took a specific question from me to elicit that those young boys were actually slaves.</p>
<p><a href="https://momentum.medium.com/americas-first-black-slaves-what-florida-won-t-teach-you-b0159a3b9958"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>