Established in 1738 by the Spanish governor of Florida, Fort Mose (Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose) was the first free Black settlement legally sanctioned in what would become the United States. Beginning in the 1680s, enslaved people escaped British plantations in the Carolinas and made their way south, aided by Native American guides, to Spanish St. Augustine, where they were granted freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism and militia service under a 1693 royal decree. Led by Francisco Menéndez, a formerly enslaved man from the Gambia region, the free Black militia at Fort Mose fought alongside Spanish forces to repel British invasions in 1740 and 1742. When Spain ceded Florida to Britain in 1763, Mose's residents evacuated to Cuba rather than risk re-enslavement. A full-scale reconstruction of the 1738 fort was completed at the site in the mid-2020s.