Tangled up in the root balls of enormous trees toppled by Hurricane Michael, which ripped through Florida last November, was an archaeological treasure: ammunition and artifacts from Fort Gadsden, a site occupied by one of the largest communities of freed slaves in the early 1800s.
On July 27, 1816, the U.S. Navy was firing shots at the fort (then called the "Negro Fort"), when one shot hit a storage unit filled with ammunition, leading to an explosion that killed hundreds of African Americans.
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