America's First Black Slaves: What Florida Won't Teach You
The Era Before the Civil War
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, yet Florida barely mentions them. They do teach that Fort Mose 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.
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 arrived in 1526 in Florida and shortly after that in Georgia and South Carolina, all well before 1619.
