By the summer of 1815, the last British troops stationed at Prospect Bluff departed Spanish Florida. When they exited, they left stockpiles of weapons, ammunition, gunpowder, and tools to their Black and Native allies who remained at the fort. Over the next year, this group developed into an exceptional maroon colony. Populated by men, women, and children from all corners of the Atlantic World, the community grew crops, fostered a unique creolized culture, and made Prospect Bluff into a vibrant place teeming with life. But in the minds of many Americans across the South, the very characteristics that made Prospect Bluff a symbol of Black and Indigenous autonomy transformed it into “the negro fort.” Threatened by the supposed racial and militarized menace at the fort, an American convoy commanded by Andrew Jackson illegally invaded Spanish Florida to confront the community. In July 1816, after weeks of fighting, American gunboats obliterated the fort and killed nearly all of its inhabitants.
Hosts: Sebastian Garcia and John Lancaster.
Featuring: Matthew Clavin, Jane Landers, Nathaniel Millett, and F. Evan Nooe.
Voice Actor: Kevin Garcia.
Music by Pixabay artists.
Researched, Written, and Edited by Sebastian Garcia and John Lancaster.
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The Memory of Negro Fort Podcast is produced by UCF graduate history students Sebastian Garcia and John Lancaster and hosted by the UCF Center for Humanities and Digital Research, with additional support from a gift that was made as an extension of the American Historical Association's Sinclair Workshops for Historical Podcasting.
Further Reading:
Clavin, Matthew. The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community. New York University Press, 2019.
Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Millett, Nathaniel. The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World. University Press of Florida, 2013.
Nooe, F. Evan. Aggression and Sufferings: Settler Violence, Native Resistance, and the Coalescence of the Old South. University of Alabama Press, 2024.
Primary Source:
Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume II: May 1, 1814-December 31, 1819. Edited by John Spencer Bassett. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1927.
