{"id":24147,"date":"2012-07-04T23:15:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T23:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24147"},"modified":"2012-07-04T23:15:28","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T23:15:28","slug":"freedom-road-spotlights-st-augustine-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24147","title":{"rendered":"Freedom Road Spotlights St. Augustine History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Freedom Road Spotlights St. Augustine History<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

VisitFlorida.com<\/a>
\n2012-06-29
\n
\nAmy Wimmer Schwarb<\/strong><\/p>\n

Derek Hankerson wanted to help educate people not only about Spanish Florida<\/a>, but about the diverse groups who contributed to the country’s founding.<\/p>\n

A St. Augustine<\/a> company is trying to reshape the American story \u2013 not to rewrite history, but to retell it.<\/p>\n

Derek Hankerson, the man at the helm of Freedom Road<\/a>, grew up in suburban Washington, D.C., learning the same tales of America\u2019s birthplace that are told in children\u2019s textbooks throughout the United States. But he often visited relatives in St. Augustine\u00a0 and could never reconcile the history he found there with what he learned in school.<\/p>\n

“The sign in St. Augustine said, \u2018Established in 1565,\u2019 and then I go back to school, and I don\u2019t see a thing about Florida. I don\u2019t see a thing about blacks,\u201d Hankerson said. “All I see is 1776.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hankerson spotted that disparity when he was about 10 years old, and announced to his family that he planned to correct it. He wanted to help educate people not only about Spanish Florida, but about the diverse groups who contributed to the country\u2019s founding.<\/p>\n

Today, Hankerson is the managing partner of Freedom Road, which offers in-depth bus tours of northeast Florida that give visitors insight into an early American story that might be new to many of them.<\/p>\n

“Our tours deal with five centuries of history,\u201d Hankerson said. “This is history related to the New World. I say \u2018the New World\u2019 because that\u2019s different than the United States of America. We\u2019re talking pre-United States of America.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…James Bullock, the creative director for Freedom Road, is typically the guide for the tours. Dressed in period costume, he walks guests through how different cultures \u2013 Spanish, African, Native American, German, Irish, Greek \u2013 made their lives in the New World…<\/p>\n

And Bullock and Hankerson stress that while much of U.S. history has focused on the separation of races, Spanish Florida brought a different culture to the New World. Even the geography of the Old World played a role: Only 11 miles separate Spain from Africa at their closest point, so trade, relationships and inter-marrying were common even before the groups came across the Atlantic..<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Freedom Road Spotlights St. Augustine History VisitFlorida.com 2012-06-29 Amy Wimmer Schwarb Derek Hankerson wanted to help educate people not only about Spanish Florida, but about the diverse groups who contributed to the country’s founding. A St. Augustine company is trying to reshape the American story \u2013 not to rewrite history, but to retell it. Derek […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[459,3015,6,20],"tags":[11173,11172,11171,10110,3707,11174,11170],"class_list":["post-24147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-native-americans","category-new-media","category-usa","tag-amy-schwarb","tag-amy-w-schwarb","tag-amy-wimmer-schwarb","tag-derek-hankerson","tag-florida","tag-james-bullock","tag-visitflorida-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}