Occasional showers didn't deter a steady stream of visitors to the Second Tallahassee History Festival and Expo on Saturday. Many involved in the event are already looking ahead to next year's Tallahassee Bicentennial Celebration.
Among the festival's discussions, a little-known and long disappeared community just southwest of the Capital City. Jeffrey Shanks is with the National Park Service
"This free Black community, this 'Maroon community' that was living there trying to build lives for themselves as best they could in the shadow of enslavement and that's a story that's harder to get at. Archeology may be one of the few ways to get there," he told the crowd by way of explaining the saga of the Negro Fort at Prospect Bluff.
Festival organizers expect there will be lots of digging, both actual and figurative, between now the next year when Tallahassee marks its 200th anniversary.
