ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — This week and last, there is a blues and jazz festival taking place at Fort Mose State Park in St. Augustine, bringing in headliners Gladys Knight and Mavis Staples.
The concerts will raise money to build something that a place named Fort Mose should have: a fort!
There hasn't been one on the property for hundreds of years.
The dream of rebuilding the colonial fort has been in the works for years, and this year it’s finally going to happen.
At Fort Mose State Park reenactors do a terrific job of stoking visitors’ imaginations about the story of the first free black settlement in North America.
In the 1700’s, before the underground railroad ran north, it actually ran south. Enslaved people fled the Carolinas and found freedom at on the outskirts of St. Augustine They lived in a settlement called Fort Mose.
Charles Ellis and Dr. Dorothy Israel are part of the Fort Mose Historical Society. They have been telling the little known story for years.
"This is such an important story because it talks about freedom," Israel said.
The community and the fort were just a few miles from the bigger stone fort in St. Augustine. At Fort Mose, free Blacks and Spanish fought alongside each other to protect St. Augustine.
Over the years, volunteers have lead visitors through the woods at Fort Mose State Park and urge visitors to imagine a settlement there. Ellis said that inevitably, the visitors would ask one question: Where’s the fort?
Israel laughed and nodded. "It was so funny for me to see kids come and say, 'Where’s the fort? I came to see the fort. There's no fort!'"
What happened to it?
Dr. Liz Ibarrola is an archaeologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas. She has studied the Fort Mose site for years and explained that the fort at Mose was not the most durable. "It wasn’t constructed out of stone. It was constructed out of dirt, primarily. The fort went back into the ground over time," she said.
After years of grant applications and fundraisers such as the Blues and Jazz Series, featuring the likes of the legendary Count Basie Orchestra, the Fort Mose Historical Society this month announced it plans to break ground to reconstruct an actual fort.
Having a fort will change things here.
"I think our visitation will triple itself in the next five years, maybe quadruple, just simply because of the added aspect in helping us tell the story," Ellis said.
Israel added, "We want to make a community of it. We want kids to go in, see pictures, do games that would come alive in terms of what families went through at that time."
Ellis said an actual fort will amplify the experience and the story of men and women seeking freedom.
"It’s really a beautiful story of struggle, determination, courage and making it here," Israel noted.
Ellis expects to break ground this fall, and for the fort to be completed in early 2024.