 1738: The
Spanish
established Gracia
Real de Santa Teresa
de Mose (Fort Mose),
the first free African
community in
America, to defend
against the British.
 Approximately 100
Africans lived at Fort
Mose, forming more
than 20 households.
In 1728, helping to defend
the Northern Florida
Frontier from English and
Native American raids, the
Black Militia gained
respect and honor.
 1739: When the largest
slave uprising in the
history of North America
took place near
Charleston, SC, the Spanish
were blamed .
 1740: The British attacked
St. Augustine under
General George
Oglethorpe. Fort Mose was
captured.
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1752: Spaniards rebuilt Fort
Mose.
 1784: When the British
evacuated Florida, Spanish
colonists came pouring in.
 Escaped slaves came, trying
to reach a place where their
U.S. masters could not reach
them.
 1787: More than half of the
plantations in Florida had
fewer than four slaves.
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Detail from The Death of Major Pierson,178284, by John Singleton Copley Tate Gallery.
A new influx of freedomseeking blacks reached
Florida during the
American Revolution (17751783)
American slaves had
agreed to fight for the
British in exchange for
liberty. (Florida remained
under British control
throughout the conflict.)
 During the Revolution,
hundreds of black refugees
forged new ties to
Seminole Indians in Florida,
many of whom also fought
as British allies.
Runaway slaves took shelter
with the Seminoles
 Sometimes called Maroons,
the ex-slaves developed a
distinct culture, but adopted
Seminole ways of life and
clothing
 They had a patron-client
relationship with Seminoles
with whom they raided slave
plantations and recruited
more runaway slaves to
Florida
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1821-45: Territorial status: white
Floridians were concentrating on
developing the territory and gaining
statehood.
Florida’s population had reached 55,000
people, with African American slaves
making up almost one-half of the
population.
1821: Andrew Jackson Allen, one of the
earliest performers in America, sang a
"Negro dialect" song on the Pensacola
stage in blackface.
1845: Florida entered the
Union as a slave state,
balancing the free state
status of Iowa
 1851: Steven Foster's
song, "Old Folks at
Home," glorifying
plantation life, was
written. It was adopted
as the official state song
by the Florida state
legislature in 1935.

1861: The independent "nation of Florida"
withdrew from the American Union.
 1861: In Pensacola the Army of the Confederate
States of America took Ft. Pickens.
 Florida provided an estimated 15,000 troops and
significant amounts of supplies— including salt,
beef, pork, and cotton—to the Confederacy, but
more than 2,000 Floridians, both African American
and white, joined the Union army.
 Key West and Fort Meyers remained under Union
control throughout the war.
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1803: Denmark abolishes the slave trade.
1807: Britain abolishes the slave trade.
1817: France abolishes the slave trade.
1818: Holland abolishes the slave trade.
1820: Spain abolishes the slave trade
1824: Sweden abolishes the slave trade.
1833: Slavery itself is finally abolished in the British colonies.
1833: Slavery is abolished in the West Indies.
1834: Slavery ends in the Bahaman Islands.
1835: On June 25, Queen Maria Cristina abolished the slave trade to
Spanish colonies.
1848: Slavery is abolished in the French colonies.
1863: African-Americans in Union-occupied areas became free citizens
on New Year's Day with the Emancipation Proclamation.
1863: Slavery is abolished in the Dutch colonies.
1873: Slavery is abolished in the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico.
1880: Slavery is abolished in Cuba.
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Jonathan Gibbs
Decline of Florida’s plantation economy.
1870: Josiah T. Walls served as a state
representative and senator and was Florida's
first African-American in the U.S. House of
Representatives.
Jonathan Gibbs filled the office of Secretary
of State while fellow African-Americans
throughout the state served as members of
city councils.

1876: A School for African Americans was
built in Tallahassee.
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1877: Reconstruction ended and federal
troops left

Jim Crow Laws limited the rights and
freedoms exercised by African-Americans.
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1882: The cigar industry in Tampa,
Florida created a unique, multicultural,
multiracial urban area. Afro-Cubans,
Cuban-born whites and white political
exiles from Spain immigrated to work in
the cigar factories.
1887: Eatonville was the first black
incorporated municipality in Florida.
African American laborers built
Florida’s railroads and roads, tapped the
turpentine and farmed the sugar-cane
fields in the rapidly growing state.
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Both agriculture and tourism,
before air-conditioning was
commonplace, needed workers
during the winter.
Around 1890 blacks from the
Bahamas began arriving in
Florida’s lower east coast for
seasonal agricultural work.
Between 1900 and 1920, 10,000 to
12,000–about one-fifth of the
Bahamian population–came to
Florida.
By 1920 the foreign-born made up
a quarter of Miami’s population;
Bahamian blacks comprised 16%
of the city’s entire population.
Bahamian gathering in Coconut Grove
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Born in Jacksonville, FL
Author, poet, Civil Rights activist
• Autobiography of an Ex-Colored
Man –1912
• The Book of American Negro
Poetry – 1922
• “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – the
Negro National Anthem
First African American accepted to
the Florida bar
Prominent in Harlem Renaissance
One of the first African-American
professors at New York University
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Following World War I,
Florida, experienced
heightened racial tensions
and anti-immigrant
sentiments that led to
lynchings and racial
persecution.
An election in 1920 in
Ocoee in Orange County
ended in a race riot and
deaths.
In 1923, the entire AfricanAmerican town of
Rosewood was set fire and
residents killed by a white
mob.
A burning cabin near Rosewood, Florida, January 04, 1923
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Born to former slaves in South Carolina
After graduating from college and
marrying, she founded a school for
girls in Daytona Beach, which later
merged with a boys school to become
Bethune-Cookman College

As a businesswoman, she was involved
in insurance and housing development

1932: founded the National Council of
Negro Women

1936: appointed by President
Roosevelt as to serve as a director in
the National Youth Administration and
as special assistant to the Secretary of
War during WWII
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Born in Green Cove Springs, FL
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Sculptor
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Educator: Savage Studio of Arts
and Crafts, Harlem. Students
included: Jacob Lawrence,
Norman Lewis, and Gwendolyn
Knight.
Another student was the
sociologist Kenneth B. Clark,
crucial to Brown vs. Board of
Education case.
The Harp, 1939. Augusta Savage.
Cast Plaster.
 Anthropologist, folklorist,
novelist and playwright
• Mules and Men, 1935
• Tell My Horse, 1937
• Their Eyes Were Watching
God, 1937
 Grew
up in Eatonville, FL
 First African-American
graduate of Barnard
College (Columbia U)
 Prominent in Harlem
Renaissance
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World War II was the last conflict to countenance
segregated military units.
Florida in World War II became almost one big military
post with 172 installations.
African-Americans from less segregated regions of the
U.S. faced typical Jim Crow rules while on duty in Florida.
German prisoners of war could use facilities from which
American blacks were banned.
After the war, famous athletes, such as baseball’s Jackie
Robinson and Hank Aaron, encountered the same racial
restrictions during spring training sessions in Florida.
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African-Americans began a voter
registration campaign, but change was
resisted violently.
On Christmas Eve, 1950, Harry T. Moore,
state leader of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), and his wife were killed by a
bomb beneath their bed because of his
voter-registration activities.
By the early 1960s blacks in Florida cities
joined others throughout the south to
protest segregation.
In 1963 and 1964 Martin Luther King
organized demonstrations in St. Augustine,
then celebrating its 400th anniversary of
founding.
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1964: Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
1965: The Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s "one-manone vote" ruling and related decisions brought externally
imposed change to Florida’s political and racial life.
Although Brown vs, Board of Education negated the separate but
equal doctrine in 1954, Florida schools did not desegregate until
the late 1960s.
Following the civil-rights legislation and court actions of the
1960s, African-Americans once again returned to elected
positions.

1968 : the first African-American was elected to the Florida
Legislature since Reconstruction.

1992 : the first African-Americans since Reconstruction were
elected to represent Florida in the U.S. Congress.
Group of African-American landscape painters who
emerged in the 1950s in Fort Pierce led by Alfred
Hair and Harold Newton
 Denied access to art galleries, they sold their
paintings from the trunks of their cars

Harold
Newton