Dr. Uzi Baram - Freedom-seeking people found a haven of liberty on the Manatee River from the 1770s until 1821. The community known as Angola, destroyed just as Spain transferred Florida to the United States, was nearly lost with only a slender reed connecting local interest to a historian and then a community scholar. After a 15 year community archaeology project, January 2020 excavation,s and exciting insights from laboratory research, details for the daily life of the maroons can now be told, inspiring insights into a key moment in Florida history and freedom’s heritage in Sarasota/Manatee.