Black Seminoles

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The Black Seminoles (Spanish: Semínolas Negros), or Afro-Seminoles (Afro-Seminolas), are an ethnic group of mixed Seminole and African origin. They are mostly blood descendants of the Seminole people, free Africans, and escaped former slaves, who allied with Seminole groups in Spanish Florida. Many have Seminole lineage, but due to the stigma of having mixed origin, they were categorized as slaves or Freedmen in the past. Historically, the Black Seminoles lived mostly in distinct bands near the Native American Seminoles. Some were held as slaves, particularly of Seminole leaders, but the Black Seminoles had more freedom than did slaves held by whites in the South and by other Native American tribes. This included the use of firearms. Today, Black Seminole descendants live primarily in rural communities around the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Its two Freedmen's bands, the Caesar Bruner Band and the Dosar Barkus Band, are represented on the General Council of the Nation. Other centers are in Florida, Texas, the Bahamas, and northern Mexico. Their culture is a blending of African, Gullah, Seminole, Mexican, Caribbean, and European traditions. Since the 1930s, the Seminole Freedmen have struggled with exclusion from the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. In 1990, the tribe received the majority of a $56 million judgment trust by the United States, for seizure of lands in Florida in 1823, and the Freedmen have worked to gain a share of it. In 1999, a suit by the Seminole Freedmen's against the government was dismissed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit which ruled they could not bring suit independently of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, which refused to join. In 2000, the Seminole Nation voted to restrict membership only to those who could prove descent from a Seminole on the early 20th century Dawes Rolls, which led...