Having lived in Florida for about a year now, I have happily discovered that the state has lots of history, going back thousands of years, and that history is quite diverse. There are numerous state parks and historic sites, and it seems every town has a heritage village, displaying original structures and history from the 1800s. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic of the last year, our travel has been hampered, and we're looking forward to getting out to one of these places soon. However, I have been finding some great reads.
Finding Florida by T.D. Allman is a comprehensive history, from Spanish exploration to the early 21st century, published in 2013. Allman is not a historian; he's a journalist whose published a few nonfiction books and lots of articles in leading magazines. There are a couple of historical errors that I found, and it's easy to discern the author's political leanings in a few places, but overall it was a very good read. Here's an article going into more detail about errors in the book: https://www.tampabay.com/features/books/finding-flaws-in-finding-florida-by-td-allman/2112999/?fbclid=IwAR1zs4ez3Sj_G8lxk0ofsUfkAw3wLrCmWV_ZIOdMyvXV-Na-QlxnrwLwjY4 . In spite of the errors, it has exhaustive bibliography and notes sections. It is very much an iconoclastic take on Florida's history. The author's intent is to pull back the gauzy curtains hiding Florida's ugly past that gets glossed over in textbooks, historical markers, and theme park propaganda. Think along the lines of Howard Zinn and James Loewen. According to Allman, Florida is the result of the work of a long line of con artists and swindlers. Not every character in the book is a villain, however. There are a few heroic figures, like the Reconstruction-era governors who actually worked toward public education and civil rights for all. The book is well-written and engaging, and I recommend it.
One of the forward thinking Floridians that Allman writes about is Zephaniah Kingsley, a plantation owner in the Jacksonville area. Although he was a planter who used slave labor to build his fortune, he actually practiced a form of slavery closer to African or Spanish slavery than American slavery. He allowed his slaves to develop skills and make money on their own. They were allowed to purchase their freedom at reduce rates, and he emancipated many of his slaves. Beyond that, he also advocated for racially mixed marriages and families, arguing that that was the way to create a better free society. He put his beliefs into practice by creating four families with women that he purchased as slaves, and he later freed his wives and children. The most famous of his wives was Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley (book by Daniel L. Schafer). Imagine that you're about 13 years old and an African princess. One day, you're kidnapped and sold into slavery. Your new owner makes you his concubine or wife. That's what happened to Anna Kingsley. She became Zaphaniah's chief wife and mother of several of his children, and a wealthy and powerful businesswoman, plantation owner, and slaveowner on her won after his death. Her home is now a national historic site ( https://www.nps.gov/timu/learn/historyculture/kp.htm ). It is an extremely fascinating story, and very unusual. There are other stories of white plantation owners taking enslaved women as wives and even leaving their estates to the women and their children, but few of these women made as much of an impact as Kingsley. (Another interesting point about Florida seems to be that many cities count women as their founders.) It's a great book about a topic I knew nothing about. I'm looking forward to visiting Kingsley Plantation.
A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith is probably one of the most recommended historical fiction novels about Florida. Many people have read it, and it's often been taught in schools. It's one of those sweeping, multi-generational family melodramas that were very much in vogue in the 1970s and 1980s; think along the lines of James Michener, and Herman Wouk. It's the story of the white pioneer families who moved into Florida during the mid nineteenth century, in particular the fictional MacIvey family. The MacIveys move to Florida from Georgia and homestead the rugged terrain that was Florida. They become "Crackers" or "cow hunters," rounding up the feral cattle descended from the original cattle brought by the earliest Spanish settlers. The cows had centuries of wild life roaming Florida's plains, and they were free for the taking. the cow hunters, America's first cowboys, rounded them up and took them to market towns on the coast to sell and ship north. They were called Crackers because their tool of choice was an up to 18 foot long bullwhip which they cracked over the cows heads to control them. Cracker life was hard, and the MacIveys endured great hardships, from natural disasters to cattle rustlers. Still the family prevailed and built a real estate wealth, The book covers that roughly 100 years of family history.
African Americans of Tampa is part of the Images of America series, and it's a collection of hundreds of photos that document Black life in Tampa. We had the pleasure of meeting the author, Ersula Knox Odom, and doing her Black history of Tampa walking tour, and we learned a lot. The book's pictures and captions tell a real story that's still being written.
These books were a great start for me, but there's much more for me out there. As good as they are, these books still leave gaps for me, and I'm working on those gaps, especially in Native American and Black history. I have a couple of books on my list, so look out for future Florida history posts.
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