The year is 1687, eight Black men, two Black women, and a little Black baby all tear off into the dark of night, escaping their Carolina plantation (the state hadn’t split yet). They travel for days 'til they end up in the Spanish owned Florida town of St. Augustine. After agreeing to convert to Catholicism, the Florida governor agreed to shelter the runaways. When bounty hunters came to reclaim them the Governor was like, “Nah, bro! They might have been slaves once, but they’re Catholics now! You gotta bounce, son!”
Well, the word got around and soon droves of Black folk were heading to St. Augustine to escape the horrors of slavery. So many in fact that the Floridian colony was writing back to Spain like, “Uhh…what should we do about this? The States are gonna get pissed if we keep harboring fugitive slaves.” They had their answer on November 7th, 1693. King Charles II of Spain issued a proclamation offering liberty to all men and women.
Almost a hundred years later in 1738 the Black residents of St. Augustine founded a town two miles north called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. The initial population was about 100 and mostly consisted of unmarried men. Because of this, many of them married local Indigenous women, making Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose one of the first ethnically integrated settlements.
This settlement was mutually beneficial to Spain and the free Black residents. Spain would offer the settlement protection, while the freed men agreed to fight for the crown of Spain.
In 1739 that’s exactly what happened. Carolina was getting super grumpy that they kept losing slaves to the Spanish, and after a slave revolt in 1739 the British planned to launch an attack on Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. The city was overtaken, but on the morning of June 14th, 1740 the former residents launched a counter attack. This day would be known by the British as “bloody” or “Fatal” Mose. About 75 British lives were lost as the town was retaken by a combined Black, Indigenous, and Spanish forces. After all this fighting the town itself was pretty trashed. It wouldn’t be resettled until 1752 and was finally surrendered to the British in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. A lot of the former residents of what is now Fort Mose left at this time to find homes in Spanish held Cuba.
So that’s the story of the first Black Settlement in what would become the United States of America, and it was entirely built by freed peoples for those who wished to be free! This is the story of folks who risked their lives, founded their own settlement, and fought hard to defend it. In 1996 Mose was officially recognized as a National Historic Landmark, where hopefully it will be maintained and preserved for generations to come.
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