George Washington had nothing but trouble with Florida. Thomas Jefferson tried to steal it. Abraham Lincoln hoped it would win him re-election. Three men came to Florida to fight and ended up in the White House. Franklin Roosevelt was nearly assassinated before he could be inaugurated and quick thinking by a Secret Service agent saved John Kennedy’s life in Florida. Herbert Hoover learned about Al Capone and Warren G. Harding got stuck on a Florida sandbar. Learn about America’s presidents’ strange relationship with our state. This talk is based on the book, Presidents in Florida.

The early history of European settlements in Florida with a focus on Florida’s rich yet largely neglected Spanish colonization, which began nearly a century before Jamestown with St. Augustine, the first European settlement of North America established in 1513.

A critical analysis of Rosewood, a predominantly black community destroyed in 1923 during a racially motivated attack, and other majority-black cities in Florida within the context of group economics and how that tradition among African Americans was destroyed.

Anti-war and abolitionist activists helped promote an enduring series of myths and fabrications about Chief Osceola, who played a pivotal role in the Second Seminole War and died in U.S. military captivity in 1838. Osceola was a focus of debates over Indian wars, Indian removal, and their connections to American slavery.

Every 4 years, Dr. Scourfield-McLauchlan takes her students to the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire to see the campaigning process up close. Learn about the physically grueling pace that a campaign moves and what it takes to be elected to the highest office in the land from a veteran of several presidential campaigns.

This presentation explores efforts to restore Florida’s waterways. We will investigate the motivations of environmentalists who love and advocate for these water bodies. By focusing on issues related to springs and the Everglades, we will dive into the conversations that arise when Floridians view water as essential to their quality of life.

The fascinating history of Weeki Wachee Springs told through vintage photographs of the mermaids from their earliest days performing silent ballets to the heyday when ABC built them a million-dollar theater. When Newt Perry sank a theater into the edge of the spring in 1947, he had no idea his mermaids would become world famous Florida icons