Fort Mose, the First Free Black Town
Near St. Augustine, Florida
Two miles north of Saint Augustine stood Fort Mose, the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in what is now the United States. Its full name was Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. The story begins with a Spanish policy.
In sixteen ninety-three the crown decreed that enslaved people who fled the British colonies to Spanish Florida would be granted their freedom, provided they converted to Catholicism and served in the militia. It was partly faith and partly warfare, a deliberate way to bleed labor from British Carolina. One of those who escaped was Francisco Menendez, born a Mandinka in West Africa.
He rose to command the free Black militia of Saint Augustine. In seventeen thirty-eight the governor, Manuel de Montiano, formally established Fort Mose for these free Africans, who guarded the northern approach to the city. Their courage was tested in seventeen forty.
During Oglethorpe's siege, British troops occupied the fort, and before dawn Francisco Menendez led a surprise counterattack. The British were caught sleeping. Roughly sixty-eight were killed and dozens captured, in a fight remembered as Bloody Mose.
When Spain handed Florida to Britain in seventeen sixty-three, the people of Fort Mose refused to live again as slaves. They sailed to Cuba rather than surrender their freedom.
