Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Georges to Jorge

painting of Gen Biassou by Alexandra Barbot

"Myth is more potent than history" Robert Fulghum

At the end of the 1700's our "other fort" in St. Augustine, Fort Mantanzas, was manned by a black platoon headed by the exiled former Haitian revolutionary, Jorge Biassou. David Nolan has written an interesting article as to how this came to be. Not mentioned is the fact that this "freedom fighter" maintained his own slave plantation here.He was known to be a man who brooked no disrespect. He died in 1801 at the age of sixty in a brawl at a tavern on St. George Street just down from his house(Parkinson, Wenda (1978). This Gilded African).Article

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