When Other People Tell Your History
Saint Augustine, Florida and its Rewrite of History
St. Augustine, Florida is beautiful, at least in the historic district. It has a seedy side like most cities, but that isn’t today’s topic; maybe I’ll get back to it another time. St. Augustine is the longest, continually inhabited European-founded city in the United States — it markets itself as the “Nation’s Oldest City.” With all respect to the Pulitzer Prize-winning series by the New York Times, the 1619 Project. Slavery in America didn’t begin with twenty slaves landing in coastal Virginia. Florida was getting busy with enslaved people long before that. When Spaniard Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded St. Augustine in 1565, he brought slaves with him.
I live in Orlando, Florida, just over one hundred miles from St. Augustine. I’d been there previously a few times but without taking a serious interest in the history of enslaved people. I’d been planning a trip to some history-rich sites in Virginia, Maryland, and Georgia that got derailed by COVID-19. I decided to take a day trip to St. Augustine to see what the nation’s oldest city was saying about its history.
My first stop was the Oldest House Museum, which technically is the oldest surviving Spanish Colonial dwelling. It’s run by the St. Augustine Historical Society. The complex includes the Gonzalez-Alvarez House, the…
