ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The long journey in creating this book began with my role in mounting a symposium on African American life and culture on the Georgia coast and in assisting Philip D. Morgan in editing the resulting material for a book. This grand enterprise gave me the chance to work with historians Jacqueline Jones, Michael Gomez, Erskine Clarke, Betty Wood, and Vincent Carretta. In a subsequent symposium on the environmental history of coastal Georgia, Paul Sutter gave me an incomparable lesson in editing the papers for yet another book. One participant, Tiya Miles, offered her encouragement and direction in how to approach the question of Black resistance.

The research for my book On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2013) brought to the surface ample material for studying the topic of Black resistance from a Black perspective. It was another matter to piece together the bits and pieces of information found in multiple archives, primarily in the Georgia Archives in Morrow, the Hargrett Library at the University of Georgia, the Georgia Historical Society, and the extensive East Florida Papers left by the Spanish government, now in the Library of Congress. A windfall came in December 2021 when the 65,000 documents constituting the East Florida Papers were placed online. The person to whom I am most indebted is Jane Landers, whose voluminous studies of Black society in Spanish Florida have long set a standard for those looking at the Spanish Caribbean. Her work provided a constant source of inspiration while her review of my writing kept me focused on the main thesis. In addition, Jim Cusick, curator of the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida history at the University of Florida, provided timely advice.

The turning point in the final stages of putting together the manuscript came with my participation in a “Coffee House” in the spring of 2021, a creative idea of the Omohundro Institute in response to the pandemic. Twelve scholars met via Zoom under the direction of Simon Newman, professor emeritus of the University of Glasgow. The discussions forced me to rethink my approach to the motivation of freedom seekers, the reality of archival silence, and the limits to the use of historical imagination.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Kevin Kokomoor of East Carolina College who read my chapter on the Creek war captives.

I thank the staff of the Georgia Historical Society, especially Todd Groce, president, and Stan Deaton, senior historian, for their constant support over a lengthy period. At the same time, the staff at a long list of institutions enabled the research to unfold in relatively smooth fashion, the pandemic not withstanding: the Georgia Archives in Morrow; the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries; the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; the Library of Congress at College Park; and the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington and Atlanta.

Elizabeth DuBose, executive director of The Ossabaw Island Foundation, and Robin Gunn, project coordinator, were instrumental in helping me delineate the role of the island as a seedbed of freedom seekers in the late eighteenth century. As director of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance (a consortium of the Georgia Board of Regents, Department of Natural Resources, and the foundation), I spent time researching the life of African Americans from their arrival on the island in the 1760s to their creation of a descendant community at Pinpoint, five miles away on the mainland, in the 1890s.

I owe special thanks to the staff of the University of Georgia Press, with whom I have worked for over fifteen years. Lisa Bayer, the director, has set the press onto a firm path of balanced growth while playing a major role in the world of academic presses nationally. Nathaniel Holly, my editor, was instrumental in raising pertinent questions and honing the text.

My debt extends to historians Erskine Clarke and John Inscoe for their continuing advice and unfailing graciousness. John has been influential at every turn in my work as an independent scholar since the 1990s. It is with gratitude that I dedicate this book to him.