Florida's Saltwater Underground Railroad
MIAMI - Juneteenth commemorates when some slaves in the South finally learned of their freedom two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
During that time, some of the formerly enslaved in the Sunshine State found their own unique path to freedom.
Harriet Tubman's famous Underground Railroad took slaves from bondage in the south up north to freedom, but Florida had its own Saltwater Underground Railroad which ran south and right through modern day Miami.
In 1821, historians say Bahamian fisherman and captains would patrol the open waters off of Florida's coasts looking for wreckage to salvage.
They'd also find people, hundreds of enslaved men and women who took to Florida's beaches searching for freedom.
Then, Florida was still a Spanish colony.
Nadege Green is a historian and founder of Black Miami-Dade.
"Under Spanish rule enslaved ppl who were in South Carolina and that region could get freedom and asylum through Florida because the Spanish crown was like as long as you could get through here, you could be free."
The estimates vary from hundreds to thousands who made the journey south, some traveling the entire length of the state through native and undeveloped marsh and muck.
Green explains the journey saying, "There are no cars, they are walking. This is a trek. This is not paved. This is swamp land, this is Palmetto bushes, this is just Florida in its natural state before it was built out."
The journey takes them all the way south through modern-day Miami into Key Biscayne and what is now Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.
There they'd get on boats to Andros Island the Bahamas which was already free.
Greens says, "You can imagine the physical feat of what it took to reclaim their freedom."
By 1825, word of the movement was spreading.
A lighthouse is under construction making the route which operated under the cover of darkness, no more.
Today, a sign feet away from the now-restored lighthouse at Bill Baggs State Park marks the official federal designation of the Saltwater Underground Railroad.
Green explains the movement saying, "It is a sight where black people stole themselves back, repossessed themselves from the horror of slavery. A system that sought to kidnap black people, force them into bondage and steal their labor. Florida is a sight where Black people repossessed themselves through the Saltwater Underground Railroad."
On New Year's Day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves.
That news took two and a half years to travel to Texas where slaves there learned they were free and had been free.
That was on June 19, 1865.
The enslaved in Florida also got the news late, just a month before Texas did on May 20th, 1865.