Angola: Africans and their quest for freedom on the Manatee

Compiled by Dorothy Ann Washington, Librarian

Black Cultural Center, Purdue University

Brown, Canter, Jr. 1990. The "Sarrazota, or runaway Negro plantations": Tampa Bay's first Black community, 1812-1821. Tampa Bay History 12 (fall-winter):5-19.

Brown, Canter, Jr. 1991. Florida's Peace River frontier. Orlando; Gainesville, FL: University of Central Florida Press ;

University Presses of Florida [distributor].

Several chapters contain information about Angola including sections on "Black planations at Sarasota Bay" and "The destruction of the Black plantations".

Brown, Canter, Jr. 1995. Race relations in Territorial Florida, 1821-1845. Florida Historical Quarterly 73 (January):287-307.

Brown, Canter, Jr. 1999. Tampa before the Civil War. 1st ed, Tampa Bay History Center reference library series ; no. 8. Tampa, Fla.: University of Tampa Press.

Brown devotes several pages to the community in the section on "Black warriors on the Manatee River"

Giddings, Joshua R. 1858. The exiles of Florida or, the crimes committed by our government against the maroons, who fled from South Carolina and the other slave states, seeking protection under Spanish laws. Columbus, O.: Follett Foster.

Howard, Rosalyn. 2002. Black Seminoles in the Bahamas. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Residents of Andros, Bahamas who are believed to be descedants of Blacks who lived in Angola.

Kashif, Annette I. 2005. Africanisms upon the land: a study of African influenced place names in the USA National Park Service, [Access date Jan. 9 2005].

Available from http://www.cr.nps.gov/crdi/conferences/AFR_15-34_Kashif.pdf.

Paper presented at the a conference sponsored by the National Park Service (US) . Angola is listed among the African-inspired place names in the United States . Citing Landers, the author suggests residents consist of runaways from Mobile, AL, Penscola, FL. St. Augustine, FL, and Georgia as well as Black warriors who served on the British side in the War of 1812.

Landers, Jane. 1999. Black society in Spanish Florida, Blacks in the New World. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

"Refugee Villages" (p. 237) discusses Angola. An African-inspired mahogany drum that was found in the bank of the Little Manatee and now held at the Florida Museum of Natural History is pictured on p. 232.

Landers, Jane. 2001. The Central African pesence in Spanish maroon communities. In Central Africans and cultural transformations in the American diaspora, edited by L. M. Heywood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Matthews, Janet Snyder. 1983. Edge of wilderness : a settlement history of Manatee River and Sarasota Bay, 1528-1885. Tulsa, Okla.: Caprine Press.

Provides names of a few of the early settlers in Angola. However, African identity is not indicated.

Opala, Joseph. 2005. Double homecoming: American Indians and African roots return to the "Rice Coast": Diaspora HieroGraphics Online, [cited Jan. 9, 2005 2005]. Available from http://hierographics.org/yourhistoryonline/SeminolesAfricanIndians.htm.

Contains excerpts from Opala's text. An excerpt about Angola on p. 314 is noted. Includes a bibliography compiled by Deborah Tucker, Multicultural Librarian, Wayne State University.

Rivers, Larry E. 2000. Slavery in Florida : territorial days to emancipation. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Chapters on "Racial contact and the African presence" and "Interaction between Blacks and Indians" of particularly interest relating to Angola.

Wilson, Jon. 2004. Lives of early settlers come into focus. St. Petersburg Times, Jan. 7 2004.

Reports on an upcoming exhibit at Boyd Hill Nature Park that displayed the work of Herman Trappman on free Blacks in Florida from 1748 to 1848. Angola is among the communities noted in the article.

January 9, 2004