Fort Mose will launch a Black history trail to educate visitors about slaves flight to freedom to St. Augustine centuries ago.
The fort was the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in what would become the United States. Today, it s a state-managed park with a nature trail.
Fort Mose Historical Society officials host the annual Flight to Freedom event, though it has been postponed due to the pandemic, to share the site s history with the public. During the event, re-enactors stand in the trail and portray characters such a slave on the run, a slave catcher, a priest and a Native American.
New interactive educational signs bring Flight to Freedom Trail to life year round at Fort Mose
News4Jax Staff
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Fort Mose Historic State Park has partnered with Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) and The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida to launch a self-guided educational tour experience along the Flight to Freedom Trail. (Courtesy of Fort Mose Historical State Park)
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – In celebration of Black History Month, Fort Mose Historic State Park launched a self-guided educational tour experience along the Flight to Freedom Trail, bringing to life the rich history of the park year-round.
The tour was created through a partnership with Florida Power & Light Company and The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida and was announced Thursday at Fort Mose by Gil Ziffer, president of the Florida State Parks Foundation.
When former Jacksonville Jaguar Lonnie Marts Jr. hung up the phone last fall after talking with Times-Union reporter Beth Reese Cravey, he had no idea what would happen next: A story about a community, a good cause and a newspaper.
Cravey had reached out to the former linebacker to talk to him for a November story about his new Level the Playing Field Leadership Academy.
To explain what he was trying to accomplish with the academy, Marts told Cravey about his relationship with his mother.
Janet Marie Marts was a single parent raising Lonnie in a low-income New Orleans neighborhood. She and Lonnie’s grandparents worked hard to keep Marts out of trouble.
In December 904WARD, a 5-year-old community organization advancing racial equity in Jacksonville, hired its first CEO and announced plans to expand its efforts to end racism in the community.
One of those efforts was compiling 75 years of research looking back at decades of disparities and failed efforts to address them, according to the nonprofit and producing an eight-part series of progress reports, Race in Retrospect.
The introductory report, released Feb. 12, will be followed by weekly reports through February and March on progress in education, health, housing, justice and the legal system, employment, media and politics and civic engagement. We kept coming back to the same point we do not need another study. Our community has researched this subject for more than 70 years, said CEO Kimberly Allen. We know what the gaps are. We know where the challenges exist. We know where there is opportunity. Little has changed. Efforts advance, groups are forme