America's First Black Slaves: What Florida Won't Teach You
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.
When Spaniard Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles 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.
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