Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 23, 2005



The Black Seminoles are descendants of free African Americans and fugitive slaves traditionally allied with Seminole Indians in the U.S. states of Florida and Oklahoma. Twentieth-century historians popularized the name "Black Seminoles" to describe the community, whose members were known in the 19th century as Seminole Negroes, or Seminole maroons. Today Black Seminoles are concentrated in parts of Oklahoma, in Nacimiento in the Mexican state of Coahuila, and along the U.S.-Mexico border near Del Rio and Brackettville, Texas. As early as 1689, African slaves fled from the British American colonies to Spanish Florida seeking freedom. Under an edict from the King of Spain, the black fugitives received liberty in exchange for defending the Spanish settlers at St. Augustine.

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