1. 1. Africans Arrival at US Oldest City
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3. 3. The African portion of this story is complex. It involves free and enslaved Black people, who were sailors, carpenters, cattlemen, bakers, soldiers, artisans, builders; but wait were getting ahead of ourselves! Lets start at the beginning
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6. 6. At that time, there was little distinction between church and state so having sighted the land on August 28, 1565 the feast day of St Augustine, who incidentally was a noted North African religious philosopher, the settlement was named in his honor.
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8. 8. Over the next 200 years the status of Africans would vary.
9. 9. This military outpost would be caught up in the international politics of territorial control, especially between the Spanish and the British.
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11. 11. At other times a middle passage port where captives were delivered as a labor force most suited for survival in the sub-tropical conditions.
12. 12. Unfortunately, Americas oldest port city routinely has been portrayed in a lop sided manner, emphasizing Spanish or British heritage and little else. We all know that is never accurate when describing a seaport.
13. 13. More importantly for us, Africans and their descendants were pretty much eliminated or cherry picked into the narrative.
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16. 16. , diverse faith representatives, and a traditional libation to honor unnamed and unknown African ancestors those who died during the Middle Passage to the New World and those who survived and contributed to Florida.
17. 17. Saturday, February 7, 2015 to honor this history and celebrate the lives of people who for so long have been forgotten. The African heritage has made this city special as the first Underground Railroad, the first legal settlement of free blacks, the burial place of Black Civil War soldiers, the final impetus for Civil Rights Act of 1964, and more.
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20. 20. With Thanks First Time I Saw Big Water Music from the PBS series Africans in America by Orlando Bagwell Composed and performed by Bernice Johnson Reagan and Toshi Reagan