Francisco Menéndez

1700 – 1770

Francisco Menéndez was a formerly enslaved man from the Gambia region who escaped British plantations in the Carolinas and made his way to Spanish Florida, where he rose to lead the free Black militia at Fort Mose, founded in 1738 as the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in what would become the United States. Menéndez led that militia in repelling British invasions in 1740 and 1742.