Florida History

"The Tropic of Cracker will . . . end the debate once and for all, of whether the term ‘Cracker’ is derogatory or a source of great pride. Al Burt has a masterpiece here."--Sandra Bogan, Florida Audubon Society

From the preface:
"The Tropic of Cracker survives in myth, memory, and love of natural Florida. It exists more in the mind than in geography, more in the memory than in the sight, more in attitude than in the encounter. . . . This book tells you about one man’s vision of a state struggling to remain true to itself. It mixes new essays with a span of earlier ones written during nearly a quarter century of roving the state as a columnist for the Miami Herald. All of them, in sum, help illuminate and explain the Tropic of Cracker."--Al Burt

The crack of the old-time cow hunter’s whip gave the native Floridian a nickname, but Al Burt’s Tropic of Cracker is a state of mind shared by those who love "what remains of the Florida that needed no blueprint or balance sheet for its creation, that was here before there was a can opener or a commercial or a real-estate agent."
 In his years of roving the state as a Miami Herald columnist, Al Burt mapped Florida’s Tropic of Cracker, not with lines of latitude and longitude but with stories.
 The Crackers Burt tells of are men and women from Apalachicola to the Everglades, from Tallahassee to the Keys. They lived in the late 1800s, and they live today--along the Ocklawaha and in the floodplains of Lake Okeechobee. They were cow hunters, Conchs, and alligator men. They grew oranges, sugarcane, and muscadine grapes. They made moonshine. They drove mules, ate fried mullet, and told yarns in a Cracker creole about Florida’s panthers, snakes, alligators, and hurricanes. There are luminaries among them--Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Virgil Hawkins, John DeGrove, Harry Crews--but mostly they are just regular folk who mark the borders of the elusive and magical Tropic of Cracker.  
 For anyone who loves the old Florida and still has hope for the new one, Tropic of Cracker is the state’s truest road map and Al Burt its most eloquent cartographer.

Al Burt worked as a journalist for 45 years, the last 22 at the Miami Herald. The recipient of numerous journalism awards, he has been a freelance contributor to many magazines, including The Nation and Historic Preservation, and is the author of several books, among them Florida: A Place in the Sun (1974), Becalmed in the Mullet Latitudes (1984), and Al Burt’s Florida (UPF, 1997), which was awarded the 1998 Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Book Award. In his honor, the 1,000 Friends of Florida established the annual Al Burt Award for Florida journalism.

The New History of Florida, the first comprehensive history of the state to be written in a quarter of a century, is the culmination of the most recent and significant work from a galaxy of specialists. Each of the 22 chapters, which weave together in one continuous narrative, was written especially for this volume. Their authors present here not only political, economic, military, and religious information but also social history and personal experiences. Endnotes and a bibliography are appended to each chapter.

 Florida's first inhabitants entered the peninsula and panhandle about 10,000 years ago. The Spaniard Juan Ponce de León stumbled ashore near Melbourne Beach in 1513. He called the place La Florida, the first permanent geographic name of European origin to be etched upon the maps of the American continent. Over three centuries of Spanish and English colonial history followed before the United States acquired Florida in 1821. The first state flag was raised over a new capitol in Tallahassee on May 26, 1845. Written to observe the sesquicentennial of statehood, this work will document the rich history of the Sunshine State for general readers, students, and scholars well into the twenty-first century.

Contents
Introduction, by Michael Gannon
Original Inhabitants, by Jerald T. Milanich
First European Contacts, by Michael Gannon
Settlement and Survival, by Eugene Lyon
Republic of Spaniards, Republic of Indians, by Amy Turner Bushnell
The Missions of Spanish Florida, by John H. Hann
Raids, Sieges, and International Wars, by Charles W. Arnade
Pensacola, 1686-1763, by William S. Coker
British Rule in the Floridas, by Robin F. A. Fabel
The Second Spanish Period in the Two Floridas, by William S. Coker and Susan R. Parker
Free and Slave, by Jane Landers
Florida's Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples, by John K. Mahon and Brent R. Weisman
U.S. Territory and State, by Daniel L. Schafer
The Civil War, 1861-1865, by Canter Brown, Jr.
Reconstruction and Renewal, 1865-1877, by Jerrell H. Shofner
Prelude to the New Florida, 1877-1919, by Samuel Proctor
Fortune and Misfortune: The Paradoxical Twenties, by William W. Rogers
The Great Depression, by William W. Rogers
World War II, by Gary R. Mormino
Florida Politics in the Twentieth Century, by David R. Colburn
The African American Experience in Twentieth-Century Florida, by Maxine D. Jones
From Migration to Multiculturalism: A History of Florida Immigration, by Raymond A. Mohl and George E. Pozzetta
The Big Change in the Sunshine State: A Social History of Modern Florida, by Raymond A. Mohl and Gary R. Mormino
Michael Gannon, volume editor, is Distinguished Service Professor of History and director of the Institute for Early Contact Period Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of Rebel Bishop (1964), The Cross in the Sand: The Early Catholic Church in Florida, 1513-1870 (UPF, 1965, 1983), Operation Drumbeat (1990), and the novel Secret Missions (1994); as well as the bestselling Florida: A Short History (UPF, 1993), which won a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History.

"Remarkable. . . should have strong, immediate interest for the ecologists engaged in efforts to restore the Everglades."--William B. Robertson, research biologist for Everglades National Park

From the book--
Pa built our house out of rough lumber that they got from Frazier’s sawmill . . . a one-room house about 16 to 18 feet long and 12 feet wide. We all slept on cots and sat on boxes or a trunk. The kitchen was in the corner, and Ma cooked on a four-hole stove, which cost six dollars. Me and my middle brother, Alvin, sat on a trunk to eat at the table. That trunk had some long cracks in it. My brother knew just how to move so the crack would pinch . . . .

Years before the Park was established, when all the land and marsh seemed to belong to me, we would help ourselves to whatever we could see or trade for survival. Mostly we would sell gator and otter hides. . . . On this particular trip, after grunting awhile at the gator hole, I gave up and made tracks to the camp since I wanted to return by dark. . . . I was lying under my skeeter bar with a small tarp stretched between two cabbage palms. About midnight, I heard the dried cabbage fronds breaking in the path toward my camp. The night was pitch black . . .

Few people today can claim a living memory of Florida's frontier Everglades. Glen Simmons, who has hunted alligators, camped on hammock-covered islands, and poled his skiff through the mangrove swamps of the glades since the 1920s, is one who can. Together with Laura Ogden, he tells the story of backcountry life in the southern Everglades from his youth until the establishment of the Everglades National Park in 1947.
 During the economic bust of the late ‘20s, when many natives turned to the land to survive, Simmons began accompanying older local men into Everglades backcountry, the inhospitable prairie of soft muck and mosquitoes, of outlaws and moonshiners, that rings the southern part of the state. As Simmons recalls life in this community with humor and nostalgia, he also documents the forgotten lifestyles of south Florida gladesmen.
 By necessity, they understood the natural features of the Everglades ecosystem. They observed the seasonal fluctuations of wildlife, fire, and water levels. Their knowledge of the mostly unmapped labyrinth of grassy water enabled them to serve as guides for visiting naturalists and scientists. Simmons reconstructs this world, providing not only fascinating stories of individual personalities, places, and events, but an account that is accurate, both scientifically and historically, of one of the least known and longest surviving portions of the American frontier.

Glen Simmons has lived in the south Florida Everglades since his birth in 1916 in Homestead. In 1995 he was awarded a State of Florida Heritage Award for his unique contribution to Florida's history and folk culture. He has demonstrated and taught glades skiff building for the Florida Department of State, Bureau of Folklife, and the South Florida Historical Society; his boats are on permanent display at the Florida Folklife Museum in White Springs, Florida, and at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, Miami.

Laura Ogden, also born in Homestead and a life-long friend of Glen Simmons, is assistant professor of anthropology at Florida International University.