The Rock Newman Show Ep. 706 - Florida's Negro War

this evening on the rock Newman show the Black Seminoles of Florida participated in one of the most successful slave revolts in US history historian dr. anthony Dixon has studied this group of Native Americans and blacks and joins us to share their struggles and determination and how they resisted the efforts of the US military to keep them enslaved coming up right now on the rock Newman show [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to the rock Newman show from the campus of historic Howard University I'm rock Newman and it is my desire to inspire you of personal stories of extraordinary achievement in the early 1950s Hollywood films not only depicted Native Americans as savages but the roles were often played by white actors let's take a look I bring him a most important message I do not trust you silence your tongue young one he had been in concert with his Chiefs come we will find him my guest is an african-american history professor with expert knowledge about the efforts to enslave the entire black Seminole population in Florida and the Second Seminole War joining me now is author and historian dr. anthony Dixon welcome to the rock Newman show let me say from the outset that your book here call of Florida's Florida's Negro War is one I really wish we had several hours to examine this evening the Seminole Wars are little-known history facts much mischaracterized when it has been talked about and I want to get into I want to get into all of that before I do though I want to get a little introduce my audience to to you dr. okay dr. anthony Dixon we were talking last night and you said something that you would have no idea how much it resonated with me because you mentioned one of my favorite characters in all of American history and that is Jackie Robinson and then you mentioned another one named Mary McLeod Bethune yeah so if you wouldn't mind as we start this here if you would share what at how they're paying as crossed in the great state of Florida okay well of course Mary Mary McCloud came into Florida in the early 1900s and she established a good school for african-american girls and it went on to become what we call now bethune-cookman university the relationship between the two was such course Jackie Robinson played for plays baseball for the Dodgers their spring training was in Daytona however Jackie could not stay in in Daytona there was there wasn't a rooming house there wasn't a hotel that would accept him so he would spend initially he started spending his time in a nearby city called Sanford if you recall this is where Trayvon Martin yes was murdered and he would have to ride over from Sanford into Daytona for practice but through in time rather he developed a relationship with Mary McLeod and so he began to spend more more time on campus everything cook went and he was welcomed there so he didn't have to drive all the way back to Sanford every day especially after a long day of practice he was allowed to come over to Bethune Cookman and he began to spend a lot more time with Mary McLeod by this time she was toward the end of her career and life for that matter but they still developed a very good relationship and we still have and we do have rather archival material to attest to that relationship yeah and that where he would come visit her at the house is a home that she worked from and created a small Museum of sorts initially in a row no what she did was she created a foundation uh-huh she created a foundation on her and at her home she added a room to it as an office and through that she began to continue her work for the african-american community and when I say african-american community I mean as a whole with the National Council of Negro Women her work with the black cabinet subsequent work years later through those relationships all of those things she culminated into a foundation right and so how the home itself has now become a museum so the foundation is still there in cnw steel comes on campus yeah we still do somewhat carry on some of her work some of the community work that she she started but we also now interpret her life through through the house and through the museum and so now her her house is a museum itself and who's the executive director I am it's good to have the executive director of the mirror McLeod Bethune housed in museum yes that as well as the archives that is located right next door in the bill and the library man and so we have the University Archives that has to complete Mary McLeod Bethune collection which includes her work here in DC have you been to by any chance the National Council of Negro Women building here offices here in Washington DC no I have man it's a it it was the first owned property by African Americans right downtown here on Pennsylvania Avenue oh yeah yeah one of one of our Giants Dorothy Height headed up the National Council negro woman for many years and obviously was you know worshipped Mary McLeod Bethune and and carried on in a great tradition and she put it all together man she and her team to get that building down there yes man she was also very close to Mary as well she was a regular guest on campus as well as a few other activists and and other people people african-americans that we give notoriety to and I'll be honest not all relationships world glitz and glam oh sure relationship come to mind quickly Zora Neale Hurston yes actually taught it Bethune Cookman for a short stint but we find that that relationship you know two bright stars don't always shine together so her slant at Bethune Cookman was short but nevertheless it was impactful yeah yeah so let me ask you you you wrote this book Florida's Negro war black seminoles and the Second Seminole War 1835 to 1842 give us a little bit about your background and please tell us how you became interested in publishing this book first even in undergrad history was my major F ro M studies was my minor and I worked I had the honor working under dr. Larry Rivers who actually wrote the anthology piece on slavery in Florida and so when I returned to Florida A&M from my undergrad after receiving it I returned for my masters I became his graduate assistant mm-hmm and in that he was always sending me to the library sending me to the State Archives different places and so for me I became interested in my area was slavery and reconstruction clear dr. Larry Rivers was president of Fort Valley State yes uh-huh the same doctor left he left from Florida A&M and went on to become president of Fort Valley State right now in that my studies for looking at slavery and reconstruction I started being kind of narrowing the focus and I started looking at resistance and resistance to slavery and oppression and so in doing so I came across this this very unique outstanding story of African Americans who actually resisted slavery they really resisted their re-enslaved meant they resisted these enslavement of their of their offspring of their children and their descendants and they ended up going into a war partnering with the Seminole Native Americans and going into a war that we now consider the longest and deadliest Native American war fought on US soil but we are also now looking at it and then examining it as possibly and what I like to call the largest slave rebellion on US soil we talk about the point kupe we talk about Nat Turner and of course we talk about Denmark and his the larger fail right Denmark Vesey and the failed attempt but we don't talk about this group of people who actually absconded got their freedom retain their freedom fought the US government for seven long years and were able to keep their freedom and so when we look at it and not that vernacular and we start looking at the dynamics from that perspective we have to we have to start looking at the Second Seminole War as a slave rebellion yeah and and furthermore not only if we look at it as a slave rebellion we now have to say that it is the largest yeah on US soil yeah and you know on the clip that was played when I first saw it it just made my head explode because it the title Seminole war cries and it said Thunder and theory of savage vengeance so the depiction back in the 1950s up and that time and since that time has so often been just of that that when which speaks to the issue that until the lion is able to write his story the cap the one that doing the capturing is always gonna be glorified and that was just so prominent and when you see these kinds of films about this about this war and about this time in your book and the first things that caught me was you write you write black maroon settlements in the wilderness existed by utilizing a pan-africanist perspective in the social political religious and military organization of their communities and you say that why given their roots themselves initially most of your initial Florida Maroons are actually abscond runaways I was wrong to describe Maroons okay Maroons are basically enslaved people who decide to run away to abscond from the plantation and eke out the existence in the wilderness however they can and so they go into the most what we would call treacherous portions especially for Europeans and when I say that I mean the particularly the swampy areas because the swamps and water of course bring the mosquitoes and the mosquitoes would bring yellow fever and Europeans and their descendants were highly successful to to yellow fever so they would specifically go like the great dismal swamp on the North Carolina Virginia area and then into Florida in the different areas in Florida for those specific reasons that they could eke out their own existence now where these people come from are primary out of the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands and what we call Gullah and which is now of course the only national heritage area dedicated to african-american culture and we call it the Gullah Gullah heritage quarter color geeky National Heritage Corridor now these people your Gullah people are basically people who take West African languages is this now a homogenized group of West Africans you know and so they create a language that we call Geechee and they incorporate West African culture West African language and then they incorporate plantation life specifically English plantation life and of course English words and so they created their own culture we call it Gullah we call their language Kichi now when these people began to run away they began to hit South I know most people think the Underground Railroad always went north great but the first Underground Railroad actually went south and into at that time la Florida in the Spanish Hill Florida and they called it la Florida at this time and so because they are arguing and when I say they I mean the English in the Spanish they are fighting for control over parts of the East Coast they are actually fighting for English all English and British the English and the Spanish fighting but I meant to say I meant to say to Spanish in the British right the Spanish and the British are fighting for control over the East Coast basically right the Spanish have laid claim from as far as Miami all the way up to Newfoundland Canada and of course the English are disputing that yeah and so what happens is the Spanish understand that the English survival is based on plantation society that they have placed in on on how well they are going to do in terms of the agriculture whereas the Spanish are looking at the precious commodities they find the gold and the silver of course out and out west yeah and so they're more concerned out west than they are with the East Coast well when the British come and start taking and engulfing the land and claiming it as their own they have to come back and focus and so when they focus they realize that how the English goals is how their armed slaves go how the enslaved how many they bring in how much work they get done and that is clearly the point of which they are going to build plantation society so what the Spanish do to counter that is that they offer in 1693 they offer and eat it this is any any enslaved person that runs away from the English society can come to la Florida and live for free mm-hmm now what happens you live in freedom live in freedom is for free now this we have two different scenarios there they say you can go two ways you can either go into the wilderness live in in Florida in the wilderness eke out your own existence we only ask that when you see the British if you see them in the area get word to us that's all that we ask and then there was a second second offering or suffering group they made an offer well second group arises out of an offer and they basically say you can't live under Spanish authority you can you can't you can come to Saint Augustine st. Augustine Florida and live under Spanish authority they built a fort it's called Fort Mose a is now a historical site and the thing about it is of course because it's Spanish and you're going under the authority they had to they have one one main rule is that they had to become Catholic right so we see cultural differences tourism right starting to come about between the two groups of the two groups of Runaways now those that are living in the wilderness so they are eking out their own existence and they are retaining Gullah culture and they are keeping that color culture and so we see Gullah at this point once it gets into Florida and it go from Florida to the Bahamas and to Texas to Oklahoma and ultimately to Nascimento Mexico there's a small group of Gullah people that actually do leave Fort Mose a and they end up in Cuba and they have a community there mm-hm as well and so what we see is Gullah then turning into a diaspora once it comes into Florida and so what then happens also is while they are creating these small villages and eking out this society they're also Native Americans that are that are trying to escape plantation society as will out of the same area we see the larger numbers of course coming after the llaman see war yeah now if I could stop you for a second yeah as you say you know the Native Americans are trying to escape plantation existence also right you know and because what has happened is they who originally occupied the land mm-hmm now was we're having that was having their land taken away from them yeah and all not but and then captured by those who took the land right and it's it's also more than that as well I know that's the most important thing taking your land and taking part of your freedom but also it's the encroachment of the society you see the basic problem and I won't go too far on tangent there but the basic problem between Europeans and Native Americans was property using land right that was the basic problem they had two very different concepts Native Americans did not believe that you could own the land right whereas of course Europeans you own what you can get or take right right and so on the debt but those basic ideologies the conflict in those basic ideologies we see everything else stemming from when terms of that relationship right now when we look at relationship between Native Americans and blacks or Africans at this time it has to develop because initially all Native Americans see are these black people on their land clearing their land and so they had to come to the understanding that these black people these Africans were being forced to do so and it wasn't these Africans that were actually encroaching your layer it's actually the people who were driving the force and and were manipulating and quote-unquote owning them mm-hmm and so let me let me stop you there cuz I want to give the I want to give the viewers an opportunity to see how you succinctly put this as you prove we talked about the definition of Maroons you said these maroon communities established close relationships with the Nate with the neighboring Native Americans these two communities lived for the most part in harmony and provided the foundation for what would later become the Seminole nation I want to go further these thus the culture was created by fusing various African traditions which resulted in pan-africanist ethnos within the community this type of pan-african culture existed with minimal European interference these painters cultural traits manifested themselves in a variety of cultural forms that distinguish their communities from both Spanish society and Native American communities regardless of the close proximity research has shown that these cultural traits were most prevalent income in communication artistic expression and religion yes and each one communication with the Gullah what they did and this is where we really start seeing gonna turn into a diaspora because they are cohabitating and nothing happens overnight right there they are coming down through what was considered the buffer zone in and of course it ends up becoming the last 13 colony becoming Georgia yeah and so in that buffer zone we start seeing a lot of Native Americans and it's particularly the smaller bands of Native Americans not the larger ones the creeks the Cherokee but initially the smaller ones the Hittites and youichi's the smaller bands and those that are small affections out of the yama sea or yamasa some say and what's happening is they began to cohabitate a little bit but moreover they're beginning to to find ways to communicate better with each other so what we see is now the Gullah the Gullah dialect Gullah lange was being starting to incorporate Native American words and so once that happens we see your metamorphosis and we don't call that Gullah we actually call that the afro Seminole creole language okay and so that is the mixture between Gullah which again is the West African and English words and now we have certain Native American words that are put into it and that is what changes it and that's what really puts us on that road to saying Gullah is a diaspora so now in that write back to the relationship itself this cohabitation continues to grow yes because plantation society is encroaching upon Native America and it's encroaching in that they are chasing away the food which means they're changing their way of life and so they are also having to depend on these Runaways as well to show them how to actually plant different crops how to rotate different crops in order for sustainability now right because they can't rely on the hunting that they have done for eons a years prior it let me interject please because you when you say plantation life I want my viewers to make sure they understand what that is that plantation life is about enslaving people to be able to grow the plantations right and but it's also turning for Native American is turning the land into an agrarian society and all those open fields where the deer ran and the bill and the Bears went where they could have planted food rabbits and all of that are now being chased out because you have enslaved people who are now turning over the ground turn it all into fields and so that is also the encroachment that they are losing their food supply as well and so they are being forced out of the area they're being forced out of the area as well as plantation society growth so they began to cohabitate now here's I got a have I have to tell you this and this this is important and it kind of leads back to why you also get some of these negative words we've always had those general savage terms for Native Americans but the ironic thing about this particular case in our Roenick thing about the Seminoles is the Seminoles are hamana hamana scroop of Native Americans themselves they are actually the majority of them are former creeks bate what happens is there is a large schism in the Creek Nation the Creek Nation breaks you have your upper creeks they live in northern part of our present-day Alabama they up of course by the mountains up in that area and then you have your lower creeks that are down in that corner between Georgia Florida and Alabama right and so what happens is the the ones in the south they began to accept plantation society they even began to buy and trade enslave people and so they began to not resist plantation but actually join and work with plantation society and so the creeks up north were basically what are you doing we don't own people we take them as war we hold them so we won't have to fight them again we keep their women so we can keep our numbers up but we don't enslave them for our own living you know what are you all doing yeah and so there's this schism and so the northern northern creeks push themselves push their way rather through Alabama they push through the southern creeks and they come into Florida and so when they come into Florida they mix with the other Native Americans that are also running you have Miccosukee and like I said you have other smaller bands you even have some Cherokee that are leaving North Georgia and the other areas of Georgia and they're coming down in the Florida these are smaller bands though that are kind of broken away because they needed to figure out how they were going to survive as well and so they become this homogenous group that we call the Seminoles and it actually when you look at the word and you trace it back semolina Cimarron it has different meanings but the main one is breakaway creep or renegade creep that's why everything you see with Florida State University and they say the Seminoles they everything the first thing you see up on that is renegade because that is one of the original terms for semolina and then there was a negative term that the Spanish gave similar on which basically meant wild beasts Wow wild dog and of course you can understand that is just like anything else when you're on the opposite side of the team you know who are you to opponent yeah it's not gonna be a positive word on the other side even when we use the word grill most people don't know for europeans they thought the word grill was a very negative word it was a negative term but we embraced that term and so it's the same same thing here when we look at the words like savage and all of that good stuff is that opposite side of the fence type of thing when part of just as you're describing here and we haven't gotten we haven't gotten you know into the book yet where you really start to talk about what is the the violence the the continual grabbing of the land the the the slow the slaughter of the people and to deal with the book you know we will get there but you know just early on I made a big note when when when you talked about Angola being the first noted town there of the Native American settlements Angola and then you go then on the same page is a teen in 1821 Angola was destroyed and the town burned and we've in terms of the US military and again its occupation just throughout history when either Native Americans have been involved or African Americans have been involved there is the burning of a town man there's the slaughter of a people and so on what is this on page 11 I just felt you know without dramatizing it you expose the terror when one thinks for a second that here are people who live every waking hour who one have been imported as slaves others who were the original inhabitants of the land and every waking hour they must be mindful of the tyranny that is coming at them with fire and theory that they have no experience with for a very long time I'm sorry let me jump in there first point of clarification Angola was actually a black Seminole village it sat next to it Native Americans lived outside of Angola and you are right you see that time and time again even in in this period with my with my book in dealing with the Black Seminoles there are actually two other instances where villages are being burned that they can just completely burn it down and so we see that as a regular tactic you know that is a regular tactic that was used all the way up through the nineteen we can we can trace that all the way through tow all the way to Tulsa Oklahoma and other places then this is when communities when african-american communities out of the graces so to speak yeah of the larger white community they simply get rid of yeah and they do it by normally by just destroying the whole thing and and we all know fire is it's a pretty good tool and it's pretty quick and easy yeah so you know I don't want to jump around too much but I want to do this because as I was reading it I wrote a wrote in big letters the the the legitimacy of the conversation of reparations I mean that's a that's a whole nother conversation that's a whole nother show but when you just go back and look at the basics here of what people had and the the slaughter that took place and the the stealing by force of land by murder and slaughter and genocide that issue of of representations just I couldn't get past what a my own page eighteen it's like man does this ever make a case without trying to do it for reparations and I say this briefly so we we can't stay on topic about reparations we have different instances this this is clearly a case we have another case I'll mention in just a second the issue is there's always been opposition right and if that opposition to it comes in this idea of quantifiable measurement right how can we quantify things if we really want to see reparations right and that's been the biggest tool against reparation right but the thing about it is we actually can there are instances where we can quantify one in particular I always use think about all of those years african-americans went paying taxes to state schools that they couldn't go to yeah you see so there are things that are quantifiable yeah when we can look at repre when talking about reparations so this whole notion about it not being able to be done because we can never quantify is that's a farce that's that's just something to hold us off like everything yeah you're right that is another conversation yeah you know that's also I you know I make notes here I said you know the desire to be free the desire to be free and the fear of enslavement that is going on and and I just underline something you know says runaway slaves again as we lead into how the the the free blacks the free blacks the runaway slaves and the the the Native Americans the natives how they can't the became Seminoles and then came to the Seminole War just leading up leading up to that again is this idea of folks living living and being all the time in terror they're all the time living with the sense of terror that is just around the corner because these folks who get depicted in these movies what they are calling themselves United States military calling themselves plantation society all the rest are terrorists or the militia or the militia are terrorists yeah terrorizing the population and you have to understand that it's a progression as well yes it's a progression that's why we ended up in three Seminole Wars because each time we can actually see how each Seminole War directly affected the growth of Florida and Florida becoming what it is today the first Seminole War opened up plantation society for Florida opened up plantation society opened up where land owners came in and built wealth off of slave off the back of slaves and taking the land from the native man Taylor yes sir do so right and so what we see with that first with that first war is with the first Seminole War they get to clear out the Native Americans out of North Florida particularly the area from Tallahassee to Gainesville because that land was considered as fertile and in some places more fertile than either in Georgia and at this time Georgia was becoming cotton King and so the expansion in the Florida they figured had to be done and so when they remove them we see plantation society coming here but also this is when Florida becomes a territory Florida becomes a territory just after the first Seminole and you write and you write and once Florida became a united became a United States possession in 1821 mm-hmm whites were infuriated by black Indian relationship thus from 1821 1835 relations between Seminoles and whites steadily deteriorated so how dare you inferior people have a have a civil relationship and not only that continue to work together against us yeah see that's the that's the thing it out but they gave them that common you know the enemy of my enemy Yeah right sure and so what we see is that first war right clearing out the land floor to becoming a territory the second one the one that the book is based on that ends up being a seven-year war now here's the issue with that we have Native Americans who are agreeing to leave then we have Native Americans who said we're not going to leave and one in particular is Osceola he's not achieved but because of his war attributes he becomes a war chief and so you have those who are willing to stay who want to stay and don't want to leave but at the same token you have your Black Seminoles right and at this point we stop calling them Maroons and we call them Seminoles because they now make a concerted effort to not only live together we have familial relationships now it usually happens at the top but they're still doing it they are cohabitating together all of those good things marry yes in marriage this usually done at the higher level but you're on between Chiefs and what yeah but it's being done and so at that point right you got two different things that are going on right you got in the Native Americans who want to keep in land you got the blacks who want to keep their freedom right and so when they go into this war in 1835 it is because they are fueled of course by the Indian Removal policy from Andrew Jackson mm-hmm which spent who got his political career in Florida as well and this is where he actually got the concept and developed the Indian Removal policy yes by helping Florida get rid of the Seminoles the first round in North Florida now once this happens the war becomes evident that it is not about removing Native Americans but it is more so about getting these blacks back into slave profoundly so not only for the work because there is a number that could change things in terms of work there are large enough workforce there that could be Garner right but not only that not only the workforce it is the concept right it's the idea that you have an area that is growing into a colony there could be a cell go from a settlement to a colony that could go to its own nation based on the fact of the opposition of slavery meaning our slaves as plantation our enslaved people Yeah right will the notion to go to Florida because there is a black nation there yeah and so what happens what we find is at the end of the first Seminole War and before the second right toward the end of the first well actually the first Seminole excuse me let me get it straight because we want to get the timeline right there are there is a fort and it's called Negro fort it was left by the British yeah to these blacks yeah and for this period of time that is a progression to a nation you start out as a settlement then you go to a calling in their calling they get so forth and then it grows and it develops the next thing you know you can get your colony can develop into whatever else you want if you want it to be his own country you want to be his own nation sure you could and so that was by far the worst idea that was the worst the most troubling well that was right that was the most troubling that was the worst that was the worst scenario let's say that'd be better to say that was the worst scenario for plantation society to have these because as long they figured as long as they were down here in Florida living free then they would always have to watch theirs and they were just continuously run right and the implantation society would start to demise and they are and some even express the ending of plantation society if this continues to go on in Florida then this would be in Plantation so that something I wanted to examine here because now you're saying you know we're into the first war there's a contemplation of the second but in the meantime there had been some agreements there had been you know for those for those who agreed to move out there had been treaties right there two main treaty they had been they've been agreements mm-hmm and how did those who were the oppressor and handle those treaties well they were lopsided so it's just like it is they were lopsided treaties are the first one that got the Seminoles removed out of North Florida pushed them down into Central Florida around the area between present-day Orlando and Tampa and when they got down there many of them didn't like the land a lot of lakes in that area swampy yeah Native Americans didn't care for again in terms of the logistics here they were occupying the most fertile land where they had where they had coastlines but not only the coastline and that land just below Georgia we're basically cotton yes cotton is becoming King yes we're that fertile land that was making cotton become king in Georgia some of that land extended itself in the north floor and so they just really were concerned about the northern portion sure that land was yes right right and so people were where the natives were occupying right it was it was Seminole and yeah and so therefore you got to go off there and go to some land that's not nearly as fertile not nearly as productive no in there and so they some took the agreement they took the buyout they took the payment all of that good stuff went down into the area went down into the area and then realized how bad the land was how rough it would be to start over down there and so many of them started returning they came back saying no we're not going for that yeah you all you know you pull the flim-flam with that yeah we're not going for it yeah and so then we see other negotiations coming right and so they the Indian Removal policy is starting to to take place nationally and Jackson is coming into office he becomes president so this Indian Removal policy is going nationwide and so then all four then came to actually go out west and see that's because that's what they would do they would take Native Americans who out west and they bring them to the east coast this is how Geronimo ends up in Florida they bring Geronimo to Florida and they take Osceola and take him out with to present-day Oklahoma which back then we call the Arkansas Territory and so when this happens right when they start coming back they say no this is not gonna happen then they show them the land out west right again Native Americans are split some days Americans say take the buyout cuz they're gonna kill us all oh do we really want to be the ones responsible for you know ending our our existence and then you have the black my the black see that land as an opportunity when they go out to the Arkansas Territory and they're you know the black Seminole leadership goes out there with the Native American leadership and they look at that land they see it as an opportunity the problem is the government didn't had that land in mind for them it was just for the Native American they had planned to round up all of the Black Seminoles and return them to sleep it's a slavery and so once this was evidently clear right that is what brought the unifying effect and again so even those who are willing to go say oh no we're not going without them yeah because some of them were their children yeah some of them were their wives their husband grandchildren so they were like no we we're not going out there without them and so what happens is negotiations start falling apart and we end up in in that second war okay and I'm glad you say there you bring it to his negotiator Paula partway in the second world because this time is going by extraordinarily fast I knew we needed hours for this but we now just because of the clock need to get to that second war which is correct which is the focus here and and I think I'd like to examine it in part i calling out three names Abraham John Caesar and John Cavallo who was better known as as go for John these are these are Africans who goes on to become even more than known as John horse that's right so if you could kind of through their eyes take us or take the audience now into this war what what was that what was that risk why they were fighting and what the results were okay so by the time we get by the time we get to the 1830s Andrew Jackson is in office things have just deteriorated to the point where they are fighting now yeah you have three major bands there is what we call the st. John's band which is the st. Johns River which is on the East Coast and the main city on the st. Johns River is Jacksonville most people think Jacksonville is on the coast is actually on the river and so that's one band right the second band is what we call the Gainesville bear which is Gainesville Central North Central Florida it's a little closer to Jacksonville but we consider it well a little closer but it's on your way between Tallahassee and Jacksonville so and so and that's basically North Central Florida again and then you have your third band which is in the Tampa area when they get pushed down Angola that's the Tampa Bay area so you got your three bands all right each one of those menu name represented each one of the bands in the area yes John Caesar was the oldest because he came out of the oldest area which was st. John's because of course when the initial enslaved people began to run away in AppScan they came straight down the coast straight in the st. Augustine right so they stayed around the st. Johns River yeah all right John Caesar was a he was an older gentlemen we figured him we have no no pictures of him or anything but we figure him to be early 50s at best mid fifties early sixties his job was recruitment yeah he was the best recruiter he would go on doing what we call plantation raids yes he would rank raid the plantation for supplies guns horses cattle all that good stuff but then he would convince others to run away again because of the clocks limiter we got four minutes left oh well I could do only four minutes left I could do I need you to I was able to give me the five minutes but very quickly Caesar dies John yes because he's doing these plantation raids in 35 is his plantation race to get the war going right so Caesar dies he's older like I said he was going back and forth he had his wife was still on the plantation so we ascertained that she was probably a cook or something that high visible that's why she could never run away and then in the in the Gainesville ban we have what we call our primary black Seminole chief and that was Abraham right and he was the visor or the chief arm this is Abraham this this this is Abraham right here y'all need to know about Abraham he is the he's the chief black Seminole especially after Caesar dies in 35 he takes over he's the negotiator he speaks because mecanopoly doesn't speak English well she's all right she's Nima kenapa doesn't speak English well so he's the main person negotiating yeah with the government and with the United States and then there's a third band and that's jump go for John a John horse he's a lot younger he's in his 20s right but he is the son of a Seminole Native American chief but because his mother is black he's still considered a black Seminole he doesn't belong to a ban right I mean he doesn't belong to one of their bands all right so what happens is Abraham is the leader in Florida during the war but John because John horse is a lot younger he's also who he's right hand his right hand he is places him in a higher category he's Osceola's Weiser he's Osceola's right hand and I think and I want to say this quickly I think Osceola doesn't get the recognition that Geronimo Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph gets is because of who he was he had a black Seminole wife most of the people in his his band his war band were Black Seminoles so so in these last 90 seconds mm-hmm I'd like for you to share again what was the you characterized this as the most successful slave rebellion death talk about what was at stake and what was accomplished okay what was that stake of course was reinstatement and enslavement for some because we're talking two and three generations now we're talking people who had never known slavery now just their grandfather and so that is of course the most important thing right but it was also the growth the growth of plantation society itself yeah we can trace and I say very quickly each Seminole War opened up Florida and plantation society or Florida Society period by the time we get to the third first Seminole War two years after the first Seminole war ends Florida becomes a territory then we had a second Seminole War 1835 1842 three years later after the Second Seminole War after they decided okay the blacks can go out west we didn't want rien save you which gives them the victory why I say it's a successful sure Florida becomes a state Florida becomes the 45th state and then the third Seminole War they wanted to open up South Florida they were even crazy enough to think that they could drain Lake Okeechobee just to flush them out and so they went into a third war ended in 1858 that war ended because they felt like the Seminole numbers were low enough that they didn't have to worry about them impeding progress so they were we're willing and able and ready to go into South Florida but of course this ends in 58 they lead the Union they're going to the and by 1861 they in war and for those so for those who were being where genocide was being practiced against they had to make the decision stay here and fight and know that we're gonna be slaughtered or agree to move on right and they move on and they lived and that's what kind of changed Abraham's leadership right because he has to negotiate yes and of course they don't you know when you negotiate some people not going to be happy but the best thing was to negotiate that move to the Arkansas Territory present-day present-day Oklahoma that was the best that was the best choice and most of them got on the one got on board with it on such there and this is important by 1838 most Black Seminoles Wow yeah and then after kicking out a whole lot of US military but they got to live another day they gotta live with freedom breath for you thank you so much for coming dr. Dixon thank you it forward let me back we gotta tell him yes more yes we got to talk more thank you for joining us this evening for more information about this program or any other program produced by WH you t go to wh UT org goodbye and may God bless and may you stay free [Music] [Music] [Music] this program was produced by WH you see Howard University television and made possible by contributions from viewers like you thank you [Music]

Channel: WHUT TV

Views: 6,080

Rating: 4.8400002 out of 5

Keywords: Dr. Anthony Dixon, Seminoles, Florida, Howard, Slavery, Jackie Robinson, Mary Mc Leod Bethune, History, Bethune Cookman University, Howard University, Baseball, Daytona, Blacks, African American, Samford

Id: J8W3CO0_XZY

Length: 56min 46sec (3406 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2018