Vote for the Fort Mose Story at One Spark

Local re-enactors have asked Historic City News readers to vote for their authentic, historically accurate, portrayal of The Fort Mose Story during next month’s “One Spark” competition.

From April 7-12, in Jacksonville, One Spark, billed as “The World’s Largest Crowdfunding Festival”, will exhibit 555 projects in Art, Education, Health and Science, Music, Social Good and Technology, including the Fort Mose Story.

If you plan to visit in person, you will talk to a re-enactor who portrays Captain Francisco Menendez; then, learn the story of this hero who was born free, a Mandingo in West Africa. He was sold into slavery by other West Africans and becomes so inspired in seeking freedom, that he risks life and limb to make his way to Florida where he becomes free in 1738.

Visitors will also learn how the Bloody Battle of Fort Mose is the first defeat of the British in North America; 36-years before the American Revolution.

But, you don’t have to visit in Jacksonville to show your support for the Fort Mose Story. You can register for free at www.OneSpark.com and vote for Project # 22268. Voting begins April 8th.

The Fort Mose Story is about the first free black settlement in North America. Most Americans have no idea that escaped slaves traveled south to Spanish Florida hundreds of years before the Underground Railroad routed them north to Canada. We now know that West Africans first found their way 377 miles south on a trek to self-emancipate and free themselves from the chains of bondage in Georgia and the Carolinas.