It’s a complex dynamic that poses a number of challenges and questions about who lived here, when they lived here, what happens when different cultural identities collide, and whose story ultimately gets told.
The West Florida Expedition was an attempt by New Englanders to expand the institution of slavery into the Mississippi Delta and to build wealth on the backs of enslaved people.
At one particular stop on my Freedom Trail tour, I observe that each generation has had to fight for their rights and freedoms from the earliest colonial days to the present.
Just as important as what maps show is what they don’t show. Any time we look at a map, we see a landscape as filtered through the mapmaker’s judgements, prejudices, and cultural context.