On Jan. 11, 2023, Afro-Natives and Black Seminoles from around the country gathered at the historic Seminole Inn in Indiantown, Florida. They met in the Inn’s reception area, where the walls are decked with paintings, murals, and artifacts from the Seminole Wars. There, they said a prayer and ate a meal to begin a six-day reunion organized to affirm their complex history and discuss remedies to their historical erasure, including federal recognition of Black Seminoles as Native people. It was the first time descendants of the Black Seminole diaspora had returned en masse to the state to which their ancestors had lived free as early as the 15th century, escaping slavery in Georgia and the Carolinas.
For grant writer and the director of the conference, Wallis Tinnie, Day 1 of the reunion was the most personally impactful, as she watched three generations of Black Seminoles return to their homeland.
Florida escaped slaves tended to live among the Seminoles, who often adopted them as kin. This continued until Florida ceased being a Spanish territory in 1821. Alternatively,
— source yesmagazine.org | Liam M. Wamba | Mar 28, 2023