The Memory of Negro Fort Podcast

Episode 3: A Negro Fort

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. Please help us make our show more discoverable for others by leaving a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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.

Episode 2: A Tale of Two Officers

In the spring of 1814, the British established a military fort in Spanish Florida as a base of operations for their planned invasion of the US South. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Nicolls of the British Royal Marines, a man who held uniquely staunch anti-slavery views for a military officer of the time, actively recruited Native Americans and formerly enslaved Black people to fight against the Americans and gain their freedom in his ranks. General Andrew Jackson, who like many white southerners feared the idea of a multiracial world mobilized, galvanized, and armed by the British, readied his forces in the United States. The looming clash between Nicolls and Jackson held great consequences for the futures of the Indigenous and free Black people who had found refuge in Spanish Florida for centuries. Hosts: Sebastian Garcia and John Lancaster. Featuring: Matthew Clavin, Nathaniel Millett, and F. Evan Nooe. Voice Actors: Kevin Garcia, Brooks Nuzum, and Richard Weber. Music by Pixabay artists. Researched, Written, and Edited by Sebastian Garcia and John Lancaster. Please help us make our show more discoverable for others by leaving a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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: Cochrane, Alexander. “Proclamation: A British Appeal to American Slaves.” Bermuda, April 2, 1814. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/alexander-cochrane-proclamation [https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/alexander-cochrane-proclamation].

Episode 1: A Multiracial World

As white southerners increasingly sought more land to expand the system of plantation slavery across the southern frontier, violence between whites and Indigenous populations intensified in the decades following American Independence. In the borderland of Spanish Florida, a growing number of displaced Native Americans and escaped enslaved people found a multiracial world that offered the perfect conditions for the emergence of the so-called “Negro Fort.” Hosts: Sebastian Garcia and John Lancaster. Featuring: Matthew Clavin, Jane Landers, Nathaniel Millett, and F. Evan Nooe. Voice Actors: Kevin Garcia, Brooks Nuzum, and Maddy Poston. Music by Pixabay artists. Researched, Written, and Edited by Sebastian Garcia and John Lancaster. Please help us make our show more discoverable for others by leaving a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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. Nora, Pierre. "Between Memory and History." In Realms of Memory, The Construction of the French Past, Volume I: Conflicts and Divisions, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Columbia University Press, 1996. Primary Sources: Augusta Chronicle and Gazette of the State, April 29, 1797, https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn82015220/1797-04-29/ed-1/seq-2/ [https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn82015220/1797-04-29/ed-1/seq-2/]. Columbian Museum & Savannah Advertiser, April 25, 1797, https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn82014741/1797-04-25/ed-1/seq-3/ [https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn82014741/1797-04-25/ed-1/seq-3/]. The Papers of Andrew Jackson, 1804-1813, edited by Harold D. Moser and Sharon Macpherson. University of Tennessee Press, 1984, https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=utk_jackson [https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=utk_jackson]. "Petition of Mary Brown to the Speaker and Representatives in General Assembly [of Georgia]," 1797, Telamon Cuyler, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The University of Georgia Libraries, presented in the Digital Library of Georgia, https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_zlna_tcc016?canvas=0&x=400&y=400&w=1845 [https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_zlna_tcc016?canvas=0&x=400&y=400&w=1845].