In today’s first reading we hear a prophecy fighting for a future of peace and security for people under the throes of empire and oppression. They gain this peace and security through liberation, faith, family, community, armed struggle and self-determination. This same push for liberation and autonomy has been tried time and again throughout history, including by Black Catholics, specifically in the southern United States in the 17th and 18th centuries leading into the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.  

Since at least the late 17th century, armed Black Catholics have at various points stood at the forefront of formally organized armed resistance to chattel slavery and land dispossession by white settler colonialism in North America. Often in the territory known as La Florida, armed Black Catholic communities organized themselves into an explicit anti-slavery force throughout both Spanish periods, British imperial rule, and lastly American rule (see here). In South Carolina in 1739, there was a strong Black Catholic influence within  the Stono Rebellion in which enslaved Africans revolted against British imperial rule, enslavement, and spiritual domination by Anglican British slaveowners, and then marched south to St. Augustine to build a free life for themselves (more on the Stono Rebellion). Over time, this community rose in prominence and autonomy as the strength of Spanish rule in Florida weakened after it was returned to the Spanish after the American Revolution in 1783. Communities like these show an alternate history of formerly enslaved people, not just fighting for emancipation from slavery on an individual level, but as communities, often called maroons, fighting for self-determination and autonomy from many colonial forces.  

After the American Revolution, of which Black people played a central, if unheralded role, the 2nd Spanish period in La Florida would begin. Here, we see the Spanish Empire at their weakest. The Spanish could barely maintain St. Augustine and were forced to concede more autonomy and legal racial equality to the now firmly established Seminole Nation – a creation of Indigenous refugees from various smaller groups/bands and African maroons – as well as Black Catholic militia communities who straddled all sides (more on this relationship). It was this population of Black Catholics who – after defending their communities from white slave catchers/raiders from Georgia and South Carolina, and elements of the State of Muskogee (1799-1803) – would receive rich farmlands, homesteads, and plantations (minus the enslaved labor force) in large parts of East Florida. If allowed to continue to build and grow they, as well as their Seminole neighbors and independent African maroon villages, would threaten the expansion of slavery in Middle Georgia and Alabama and the wider Louisiana territories. 

As this community grew in strength, the US slave states bordering the La Florida territory invaded the community in what became known as the Patriot War (1812-1815). At its core the Patriots were made up of petty slave owners, slave catchers, and aspiring planters who, needing a workforce to realize their white Protestant dreams of social advancement, were unwilling to accept the freedom of Blacks and Catholics across the border. Moreover, they were terrified of the examples these free communities were setting to rebellious enslaved Africans north of the La Florida border. Stronger alliances and autonomous community building between these Blacks in Florida and the enslaved in Georgia and South Carolina could not be allowed to take root.  While the Black Catholic villages and their neighbors were able to fight off the Patriots, soon General Andrew Jackson led troops made up of slave raiding/trading allies and militias. He would attack Negro Fort, a growing established Black maroon community in Prospect Bluff, which would lead to and spark the Seminole War that led to the US empire securing Florida, and thus the safe expansion of slavery across Georgia, Alabama, and the Louisiana Territories. Jackson’s influence was also key to breaking the tenuous social equality the Black Catholic community had fought hard for as their lands, granted to them by the Spanish, were seized and many were kicked out of St. Augustine and forced to flee either to Cuba or Fernandina. 

Badly beaten, but not defeated, this community would deemphasize its armed tradition to blend into the new society, but this proved difficult as white supremacy, slavery and capitalism wove threads of oppression around them tightly. Then came the ‘Big Shoot,’ as the Gullah-Geechee peoples in the Lowcountry (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida) call it – the War of the Rebellion, or Civil War as it later became known (1861-1865). For the Black Catholic forces who were able to resist or avoid deportation, their heirs in East Florida/SE Georgia would go on to serve in the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Volunteers – the first Black regiments in the Union with formerly enslaved Africans from the Lowcountry as its core – in the final armed conflict over the future of enslavement in North America. Within this fighting force, the Black Catholic contingent from Florida would make up, in the opinion of some white officers, the best prepared, trained and ideologically clear segment of the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Volunteers (for more see here).

By the middle of 1862 formerly enslaved Africans were being recruited and conscripted (with poor results) into what was being called the 1st South Carolina Volunteer (1st SCV) regiment in the Union Army’s Department of the South. Given the failures of conscription, recruitment was turned to and over 100 Blacks, many of them Catholic, were recruited to head north and join the new regiment. This regiment, the 1st SCV, and eventually the 2nd SCV, the latter holding more men from Florida, were critical to the early efforts of Black people to strike against slavery on their own terms. We emphasize this, as most of the written academic records propose that they were fighting for the Union. This to me is questionable at best, for reasons too numerous to detail here now. In brief, it must be understood that the white Union commanders did not know the South and were reliant on their Black troops who were from the Lowcountry, not just for guidance and direction, but tactics and strategy. Black troops knew the riverways and waterways, and had a mind to maintain their autonomy from the Union – and had the Union not called them back from Jacksonville in mid-1863 for the assault on Charleston, there could have been a reality in which these troops triggered a wider Haiti-esque revolution in the South (SC, GA, FL). In the numerous battles and skirmishes that followed, Black Catholics distinguished themselves alongside those of the Protestant faiths and many who worshipped in the African religions, which at times intersected with Catholicism.

One of the key leaders of this Black Catholic maroon community was a formerly enslaved African who was conscripted by the British to fight in the Yamasee War, Franscisco Menendez. Fort Mose, a Spanish fort, was under his command and it stood at the vanguard of resisting the expansion of British slavery and, given the weakness of the Spanish in La Florida, slowly attacking the legitimacy of the institution of slavery through the force of their example.  He also made a point to build with local Native Americans, and he ensured Catholicism was practiced in Fort Mose, granted, with many Africanisms. 

Fort Mose, it could be argued, inspired a Black rebellion along the Stono River in South Carolina in September 1739. There is still much we do not know about the Stono Rebellion. From what we do know, a group of newly captured and enslaved Africans, who clearly had Catholic leanings, were familiar with European arms, had their own sophisticated military tactics, and killed over 20 whites in an uprising. As they marched across the terrified state of South Carolina burning plantations, killing whites, sparing allies of all colors, and beating the drums of recruitment, they made clear their intention was to make their way to St. Augustine where others like them had found refuge as Black people and Catholics. While most were eventually defeated in a series of engagements, some did make it to Fort Mose. The new state of Georgia under General Oglethorpe led a series of raids and invasions against this community, and Oglethorpe’s troops were stopped from taking the whole territory for England, in large part because of the fighters of Fort Mose, the neighboring Indigenous villages, and dissension in the British ranks as many of the Blacks they had forced into service revolted against them at key moments. 

My argument is to suggest, different from some of the mainstream literature, that the fighters of the Stono Rebellion fought not only for Spain, Catholicism, and their individual/family freedom from slavery, but for their lands, their history, and their culture as a semi-autonomous Black maroon community. By the force of its example and tangible work in the material world, this rebellion was a challenge to slavery everywhere.