Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Key West Cemetery

I'm looking for the Black Areas of the Key West Cemetery.  I don't really know how to navigate it or what I'm looking at. Dumps, a graveyard boy said he'd walk me through it next time I'm there.







There's this Jewish Section but it's more modern.





I think these are the condominiums that "Dumps" was mentioning that african americans are buried in.















Saturday, June 28, 2025

Fort Taylor (built by enslaved africans (but noone wants to talk about it) - Key West

It was built by enslaved people of African descent but there was no mentioned of that on the 75 minute tour I took.

"It is not uncommon for Key West to deny past racism by reciting the claim that Key West was part of the Union during the Civil War. While it is true that Union forces took control of Fort Zachary Taylor and Fort Jefferson, the allegiance of Key West’s citizens at the time is debatable.

The fact that slaves, owned by prominent citizens of Key West who leased them to engineers of the U.S. Government for personal profit, built Fort Zachary Taylor and Fort Jefferson is not debatable." 

https://keysweekly.com/42/slavery-at-fort-taylor-fort-jefferson/ 




Key West’s slavery and emancipation story is quite different from those of other parts of Florida or the U.S. From the first American settlement in 1822, slavery was a part of Florida Keys culture, and by 1860, of 2,913 people at Key West, 451 of them were enslaved.[1] But, as the islands were too small to support large-scale agriculture, the Florida Keys never developed a plantation economy. Instead, the enslaved were often forced to work as domestic servants or as workers in the salt manufacturing business. But surprisingly, the largest single employer of slave labor in the Keys was the U.S. government, which utilized forced labor in the construction of Fort Taylor on Key West and Fort Jefferson at the Dry Tortugas.[2] For many years, Key West slaveowners rented their people to the Army Corps of Engineers to help build the large masonry structures.

https://www.keyslibraries.org/post/island-chronicles-vol-8 






















Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Henrietta Marie - Bell


Working on a design from the bell from the ship used in the transatlantic slave trade named the Henrietta Marie that sunk off of Key West. 

Michael Cottman wrote, "This bell would be the clue that would lead researchers to a horrible past of pain and unconscionable acts inflicted on men, women, and children in unprecedented numbers. These crimes were so brutal that strong men, their chests tight from fear, would prefer to jump over the sides of slave ships to a certain death rather than endure another day on board."