Marronage in the Americas

Please make sure to register for each event you plan to attend.

This is the first event of the three-day program. Screening of "Quilombo"-- renowned feature film of the maroon community of Palmares, Brazil. Evening includes reception and discussion. This event is sponsored by the Consulate General of Brazil. The weekend's activities, commemorating Maroon history across the Americas, are sponsored by FBHRP, Inc. and held in partnership with Loxahatchee Battlefield Preservationists and Palm Beach County Parks. (Registration required)

Screening of films of marronage in Florida, Jamaica, Surinam, North Carolina (The Dismal Swamp) with filmmakers Clare Vickery, Dr. Anthony Dixon, Hari Williams, Roy Anderson, other scholars and authors of Maroon history, and more.

Keynote presentation and screening of Maluala, the late Sergio Giral's feature film of the Maroons of Cuba.

The three-day event culminates on Sunday, January 18, as a tradition of 33 years continues with the Annual Seminole Maroon Spiritual Remembrance at Riverbend Park. Program of Speakers begins at 10:00 am, and tour of battlefield site begins at 1:00 pm.

Above image: “Sanctuary” by Johnny Montgomery, South Carolina Sea Islands Seminole Maroon Descendant. Artwork on exhibit January 16 and 17 at Tabernacle Baptist Church, 801 8th Street, West Palm Beach, FL 33401.

Thomas Mitchell is a descendant of Seminole Maroons who lived in the area of Negro Fort on the Apalachicola River. Listen to his story.

--Video by Serge Dorsainvil

Antoinette Riley—great-granddaughter of Seminole Maroon Florence Ealer Jones Hamm of West Palm Beach who was born on Mikasuki settlement near Tallahassee, FL—chats with attendees at Annual Spiritual Remembrance at Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park in Jupiter, FL.

Performing artist, composer and collaborator, Fluteity, Afro-Indigenous Flautist, brings her sacred sounds to the Cleansing Ceremony at Loxhatchee Battlefield, Sunday, January 18, 10:00 a.m.

--Photos courtesy of Andrew Foster

Marronage in the Americas is our theme as we seek to honor Seminole Maroons who found freedom in Florida before, during and after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the founding moment of the United States.

This annual event acknowledges two 1838 military encounters: The Seminole victory against a Naval expedition force (January 15) and the massive retaliation (January 24), which finally turned the tide of the decades-long conflict which was the “longest, costliest, and bloodiest” in the nation’s history until the Vietnam War.

The film screenings of Maroon societies throughout the Americas (Saturday, January 16 -17, at Historic Tabernacle Church) feature the history of Africans and/or their descendants and Indigenous Americans who were united in maroon communities struggling for freedom during the period of European conquest of the Americas. In Florida, in fact, Seminole maroon communities originated as a natural alliance of Indigenous First Nations Peoples and self-liberating African Americans.

The Sunday, January 18 event at Loxahatchee River Battlefield in Jupiter, “Maroon Legacies of Negro Fort on the Apalachicola River, 1815,” opens with American Indigenous and African traditional rituals. The ceremony honors all of the fallen on both sides, and the memory of the hundreds of Native and Black Seminoles who were not defeated on the battlefield but later were captured under a flag of truce at Fort Jupiter and deported on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma Territory (with some being turned over to “slave catchers”), all under the aegis of Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830.

This focus on "Negro Fort" on the Apalachicola River provides background to the three Seminole Wars and to the possible source of the Maroon community on the Loxahatchee River.

The providential coincidence of these dates with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend has also made this an appropriate occasion to meditate on the horrific consequences of violence and warfare.

Info: Friday, January 16 Reception: 5:30pm Program: 6:30pm: Featuring screening and discussion of classic Brazilian film, "Quilombo".

Info: Film screenings and discussions presented by panel of filmmakers and historians.

Info: Featuring the works of South Carolina artist and Seminole Maroon Descendant, Johnny Montgomery.

Info: On Sunday, Jan 18, the Annual Remembrance will begin at 10 am at Loxahatchee Battlefield Park (at Riverbend Park) in Jupiter FL.

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Host or Publisher The Florida Black Historical Research Project (FBHRP)