The Seminole Freedmen: A History
By Kevin Mulroy, $36.95, Hardcover,
University of Oklahoma Press (November 2007), ISBN-10: 0806138653, ISBN-13: 978-0806138657, 446 pp.
As a transplanted Englishman, Dr. Kevin Mulroy might seem an unlikely candidate to peel back the layers of mystique and legend surrounding the “Black Seminoles.”
To him, his role is a natural progression from his childhood curiosity about the American West, African-Americans and American Indians, now merged in one great story.
In Britain in the mid-1970s, Mulroy, now associate executive director for research collections and services at the University of Southern California, had the rare privilege of taking a course on Black and Indian relations. In it, he found the story of affiliations between Black runaways and the Seminole Indians “very appealing.”
Learning then that little had been published on their experiences after the federal government transplanted them together from their homelands in Florida to Indian territory, Mulroy soon moved to Oklahoma to further his research.
“Academics and librarians in Oklahoma were a little surprised that somebody from England would be interested in this topic,” he recalls. “This was back in the late 1970s, before the subject became better known. Everybody, however, proved extremely helpful and supportive.
