"Aiming for Pensacola"

Riding the Underground Railroad in the Deep South

Workshop Dates: July 13-17 and 20-24, 2009

Dear Colleague,

Thank you for your interest in “Aiming for Pensacola”: Riding the Underground Railroad in the Deep South, a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop for School Teachers. The University of West Florida and I consider it a privilege to offer this unique and exciting professional development opportunity to educators from across the country. We will hold two one-week workshops this summer, July 13-17 and July 20-24.

“Aiming for Pensacola” will be fun, exciting, and intellectually stimulating. The workshop tells the extraordinary story of enslaved men and women in the Deep South who throughout the first half of the nineteenth century abandoned their homes, farms, and plantations in the quest for freedom. Against nearly all odds, they fled south toward Pensacola, Florida in the hope of finding safe passage aboard a sea-going vessel or employment in one of the city’s burgeoning industries. Some were successful. Most were not. During the Civil War, the stream of runaway slaves into Pensacola became a flood as thousands of fugitives, or as they were called, contrabands, converged at Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island, one of the few federal military installations in the South that remained under federal control for the duration of the war. Bondmen who successfully reached Fort Pickens quickly traded the tattered clothing in which they arrived for the blue jackets and trousers of the Union Army. In an incredible transformation, Pensacola witnessed the revolutionary transformation of slaves from throughout the Deep South into both soldiers and citizens.  

Through visits to prominent landmarks and lectures and discussions with distinguished scholars, we will explore Pensacola’s unique place in the history of slavery, slave resistance, and the Underground Railroad. We will also explore the critical role that African Americans and their white allies in the Deep South played in the national movement to abolish slavery in the United States. Discussions with faculty, scholars, and the master teacher will aid teachers in the development of innovative lesson plans that utilize essential primary materials, including newspapers, pamphlets, illustrations, and especially runaway slave advertisements.

As Project Director and Assistant Professor of History at the University of West Florida, where I research, write, and teach about slavery and abolition in early America and the greater Atlantic world, I look forward to making American history come alive. Toward this end, I have enlisted the help of nationally renowned teachers and scholars. Our Keynote Address will be given by Vanderbilt University’s Dr. Jane Landers, a leading historian of Spanish Florida and the author and editor of numerous books, including the acclaimed Black Society in Spanish Florida. Dr. Landers will discuss the ways in which generations of Africans and their descendents exploited Florida’s unique legal and religious Spanish heritage to carve out a standard of living, which in many cases surpassed that of Africans in other regions of the Atlantic World. Our other distinguished scholars are Stanley Harrold and David Cecelski. Dr. Harrold is a renowned historian of slavery, abolition, and the African American experience, who will discuss the rise of American abolitionism and evaluate both the truths and legends of the Underground Railroad. Dr. Cecelski, the author of the award-winning The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina, will discuss the lives of African Americans in the antebellum maritime South. Local faculty will guide us through key landmarks: Dr. Steven Belko, a colleague of mine at the University of West Florida who has written several books on Jacksonian America, will accompany us on our tour of “Negro Fort,” describing the impact of southern expansion on both slavery and slave resistance; Naval Aviation Museum historian and author Hill Goodspeed will host our tour of Fort Barrancas, Fort Pickens, and the Old Navy Yard; guiding the tour of Arcadia Mills will be the site’s leading historian, Dr. Brian Rucker, author and publisher of numerous books on West Florida history, including Arcadia: Florida’s Premier Antebellum Industrial Park. Perhaps most important to the success of our workshops will be master teacher Anne Roycroft. As Social Studies Specialist for the Escambia County School District, located in Escambia County, Florida, Ms. Roycroft is responsible for the successful implementation of the Social Studies curriculum among Escambia County’s approximately 45,000 K-12 students. A highly decorated teacher, she was the Escambia County Social Studies Teacher of the Year and Warrington Middle School Teacher of the Year in 2006. She won the prestigious Escambia County Teacher of the Year award in 2007.

When

Participants will arrive in Pensacola at an historic time, as the community celebrates the 450th anniversary of the establishment of one of the first European settlements in North America. The workshops will be offered at two different times during the summer of 2009: July 13-17 and July 20-24. Participants are asked to arrive on Sunday evening (July 12th and 19th) prior to the workshop, which begins on Monday morning and ends on Friday afternoon.

Who

Each of our workshops, which will accommodate 40 participants, is designed for public, private, and home-school teachers, librarians, as well as other K-12 school personnel. School administrators, substitute teachers, and classroom paraprofessionals are eligible to participate, subject to available space. Like the men and women who worked on the Underground Railroad, we recognized that diversity is a significant asset; thus, applications from teachers of history, social studies, literature, foreign languages, theatre, art, music, and other subjects will all be considered.

Where

The workshop will be held in Pensacola, Florida. Based on the campus of the University of West Florida, we will visit historic sites in downtown Pensacola and along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Among them are the ruins of “Negro Fort,” the former British post that became home to the largest maroon colony in North American history, and was populated primarily by fugitive slaves from Pensacola, most notably the Black Seminole leader, Abraham; Julee Cottage, the home of a free black women who assisted fugitives in their quest for freedom; the town square where one white sailor endured a public branding after failing in his attempt to assist seven bondmen escape to the West Indies; Arcadia Mills and Bagdad, a rare southern cotton mill and adjacent lumber and brick town in which Pensacola’s bondpeople avoided the plantation by earning wages as industrial workers; the Navy Yard and Fort Barrancas, which were constructed by enslaved people and played a pivotal role in the geographic expansion, economic development, and military defense of the new nation; and Fort Pickens, the massive slave-built fort that during the Civil War became both a haven for fugitive slaves and a base for thousands of black troops the Union Army deployed along the Gulf Coast.

Matthew Clavin
Assistant Professor of History
Department of History
University of West Florida
11000 University Drive
Pensacola, FL 32514