African American Heritage

1492  Juan las Canarias, a Black sailor, serves on Christopher Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria to the New World.

1527  Estevanico, an African slave, accompanies Andres de Dorants on an expedition to conquer Florida.

1540  A free African Spaniard serves as the interpreter on Coronados' expedition through southwest North America.

1675  Juan Merion, a free African, blacksmith came to St. Augustine from Havana. By 1683, he opened his own forge, blacksmithing for the royal armorer and private citizens.

1693  King Charles II of Spain issues a royal proclamation giving liberty to all runway in Florida who become practicing Catholics.

1695  Merchants Isavel de los Rios, a free Black woman and Captain Chrispin de Tapia, a free Black man testifies in a court case against several Apalachee Native Americans had given them counterfeit money.

1738  Fugitive slaves from Carolina form a slave militia in St. Augustine. Two miles north of St. Augustine, they build Fort Mose and a small town.

1763  The French and Indian War ends and Florida becomes an English colony.

1790  The Spanish rescinds policy of religious sanctuary for fugitive slaves.

1830  In Duval, Nassau, and St. Johns counties, slaves and free Blacks comprised 52 percent of the population.

1845  Florida becomes the twenty-seventh state in the United States.

1856  T. Thomas Fortune was born a slave in Marianna, Florida. Fortune later founds the newspaper New Age.

1861  Florida seceded from the Union January 10. The next month, Florida representatives participate in the formation of the Confederate States.

1865  The U.S. Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to aid African Americans.

1870  Josiah T. Walls becomes Florida's first African American member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Others African Americans politicians in Florida are John Wallace, Henry Harmon, Charles Pearce, Robert Meachem, and Jonathan Gibbs.

1883  Eatonville is the first all African American incorporated town.

1887  Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College is founded to provide higher education to African Americans.

1889  A. Philip Randolph is born in Crescent City, Florida Randolph organizes the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, an African American AFL union.

1903  Author Zora Neale Hurston is born in Eatonville, Florida.

1904  Mary McLeod Bethune founds the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Girls.

1923  The first week of January a race riot erupts in Rosewood.

1934  William (Bill) De Kova White, the first African American president of the National Baseball League was born in Lakewood.

1958  Blanche Calloway is the first African American woman to vote in Miami.

1968  Joe Lang Kershaw becomes the first African American elected to the Florida legislature in this century.

1975  Joseph W. Hatchett of Pinellas County takes the bench as Florida's first African American Supreme Court Justice.

1978  Daniel "Chappie" James, dies of a heart attack. He was the first African American four-star general.

1994  Governor Lawton Chiles names former African American legislator, Doug Jamerson to be Commissioner of Education