Women in STEM

Scary

Terrifying

Evil

Manipulative

this is a belated juneteenth post i guess. in 1687 a boatload of six african men, two women, and an infant arrived in spanish florida from the english colony of carolina. a few months later an english representative came to recover his colony’s property. we have the correspondence from both parties to the exchange. the africans demanded that they not be handed over “por el temor de la muerte,” and the spanish took their side. a few years later the spanish king officially freed the runaways unconditionally. though it was applied somewhat ambiguously, florida had a policy on the books for many decades afterward that freed all runaways to the territory. an entire free black settlement, fort mose, was established under the auspices of spain, with members taking up arms against their former masters. it made good strategic sense for spain to undermine the english with african desires for political autonomy

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27571354
https://people.clas.ufl.edu/davidson/files/Wright-1924-fort-mose.pdf