Episodes
May 11, 2026
By the summer of 1815, the last British troops stationed at Prospect Bluff departed Spanish Florida. When they exited, they left stockpiles of weapons, ammunition, gunpowder, and tools to their Black and Native allies who remained at the fort. Over the next year, this group developed into an exceptional maroon colony. Populated by men, women, and children from all corners of the Atlantic World, the community grew crops, fostered a unique creolized culture, and made Prospect Bluff into a vibrant place teeming with life. But in the minds of many Americans across the South, the very characteristics that made Prospect Bluff a symbol of Black and Indigenous autonomy transformed it into the negro fort. Threatened by the supposed racial and militarized menace at the fort, an American convoy commanded by Andrew Jackson illegally invaded Spanish Florida to confront the community. In July 1816, after weeks of fighting, American gunboats obliterated the fort and killed nearly all of its inhabitants.
Guests: Matthew Clavin, Ph.D., Jane Landers, Ph.D., Nathaniel Millett, Ph.D., F. Evan Nooe, Ph.D.
April 16, 2026
Episode 2: A Tale of Two Officers
In the spring of 1814, the British established a military fort in Spanish Florida as a base of operations for their planned invasion of the US South. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Nicolls of the British Royal Marines, a man who held uniquely staunch anti-slavery views for a military officer of the time, actively recruited Native Americans and formerly enslaved Black people to fight against the Americans and gain their freedom in his ranks. General Andrew Jackson, who like many white southerners feared the idea of a multiracial world mobilized, galvanized, and armed by the British, readied his forces in the United States. The looming clash between Nicolls and Jackson held great consequences for the futures of the Indigenous and free Black people who had found refuge in Spanish Florida for centuries.
Guests: Matthew Clavin, Ph.D., Nathaniel Millett, Ph.D., F. Evan Nooe, PhD.
February 16, 2026
Episode 1: A Multiracial World
As white southerners increasingly sought more land to expand the system of plantation slavery across the southern frontier, violence between whites and Indigenous populations intensified in the decades following American Independence. In the borderland of Spanish Florida, a growing number of displaced Native Americans and escaped enslaved people found a multiracial world that offered the perfect conditions for the emergence of the so-called "Negro Fort."
Guests: Matthew Clavin, Ph.D., Jane Landers, Ph.D., Nathaniel Millett, Ph.D., F. Evan Nooe, PhD.