Prospect Bluff - Culture of Freedom

1409 Northwest 6th Street,Fort Lauderdale FL 33311

30 June, 2022

Description

A Fort and revolutionary ideas of liberty and brotherhood launched a prosperous maroon community in Spanish Florida's vast outback in 1814 Short Film Documentary 'rough cut' Screening | 7:45 - 8 PM Interpretative Dance by Isanusi Garcia Rodriguez | 8 - 8:15 PM Audience Conversations | 8:15 - 8:45 PM Closing Remarks | 9 PM History Colonel Edward Nicolls, a British military officer with a fierce reputation as a warrior and a fiery abolitionist, planned to continue the War of 1812 by amassing forces to attack the burgeoning American nation once again. The Fort at Prospect Bluff (named for its position along the Apalachicola River) was a fortress established by Nicolls in the wild outback of Spanish Florida and became a community of emancipated slaves and indigenous fighters enlisted as part of the First Battalion of the Royal Colonial Marines. Word spread far and wide that military service guaranteed freedom as subjects of the British government. Maroon families of men, women and children settled alongside Creek Red Sticks and Seminoles near the impressive fort stockade, a deep moat and well stocked artillery. "They did not seek to gain their freedom through a violent assault on the institution of slavery and they were not a desperate band barely surviving on the outskirts of plantation society; they had achieved their freedom and intended to distance themselves as far as they could from the prior condition of enslavement." (Nathaniel Millet, 'The Maroons of Prospect Bluff') At Prospect Bluff there were Africans, Spanish Creoles from both coasts of Florida, Cuban and Spanish empire blacks, French colonial fugitives, English speaking slaves from America and Anglo Caribbean, and independent maroons living among the southeastern hemisphere's indigenous peoples. Many languages were spoken fluently. Prosperity and a culture of freedom defined Prospect Bluff. In two short years, the Negro Fort (named by detractors who feared the fort's resources and black resistance) had a system of government with educated leaders who maintained standards of justice, managed growing trade routes and helped hundreds of Negro fugitives who passed through the community in route to freedom. Dale Cox, descendent of the Yuchi Indian and Lower Creek warrior Efau Emathla whose Red Stick ancestors came to Prospect Bluff to join the British in the summer of 1814, contributed a great deal to this project. He explained that the Fort challenged a new nation reliant on slavery, Spanish sovereignty, and indigenous groups friendly to the Americans as it became a free colony thriving under black management. In July 1816 after weeks of fighting, a deadly cannonball blast destroyed the fort killing women, men and children instantly. Pulled from the mud injured, the few survivors carried the culture of freedom lived at Prospect Bluff to Cuba, the Bahamas and beyond and continued to fight for the ideas that set them apart. Mary Ashley and a few other maroon women, who were re-enslaved bravely petitioned to be recognized as free British subjects guaranteed in the papers provided by Nicolls. The Dance Dancer, Isanusi Garcia Rodriguez, retired Miami City Ballet Principal, an Afro-Cuban American born in Cuba, interprets through dance the film history via recordings c/o Lomax Family Collections and Library of Congress including the 'Cuban Song' chanted by Bahamian Black Seminole, Felix MacNeil, descendant of the famed Seminole Chief 'Bowlegs' (1935 when Alan Lomax and Zora Neale Hurston traveled to the Bahamas) remixed by Brooklyn Artists, The Brass King and Maia Nau; and a Negro spiritual “No More Trouble,” sung by a group of women prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, also recorded by Alan Lomax with John A. Lomax (April 1936) remastered by Miami Artist Dario Adames. Support The short ten minute documentary 'rough cut' screening is part of a mobile film exhibit about Florida folk culture funded by the Florida Historical Resources Board. The full exhibit of ten micro documentary films can be viewed in December 2022. Complete contact information to be notified of the next exhibit. The screening event at Victory Black Box Theatre is funded in part through a generous grant by PNC Arts Alive grant program and the Broward County Cultural Division. Graphic Designed by Emma Moore, Head of State.