African American

The story begins 40 years before Jamestown was founded with a man by the name of Pedro Menendez, an admiral in the Spanish fleet. He oversaw the enterprise to establish what would become “La Florida” or the modern day southeast region of the United States (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana).

In the beginning stages of St. Augustine, its founders did not intend it to be a colony rich in diversity. Menendez originally signed a contract with the Spanish crown to bring 500 slaves to Florida to develop a sugar plantation economy, but that never happened. What resulted was a multi-ethnic town with a group of people whom — unless you held a Spanish bloodline to protect — did not treat others unfairly. Ironically, it would take more than 400 years before the Supreme Court brought this idea to fruition.

In the late 1600s word spread of a better life to the south. The first “fugitives” escaped the Carolinas and made it safely to St. Augustine.

By 1693, the Spanish strategically issued what appears to be the first civil rights legislation in the New World to counter British expansion. The Edict of 1693 stated any slaves fleeing from the British would be given sanctuary. As a result, the first Underground Railroad was created and headed south, not north, like many believe.

The gruesome path stretched 376 miles from Charleston to St. Augustine, but if slaves made it to the St. John’s River, they were considered free. Some even traveled from far away as New York in the 1700s.

This eventually led to the first settlement of African descent in America built by the Spanish, Fort Mose. However, the site was controversial for years and was considered by some as historical revisionism.