In Sumter County

This edition of The Florida History Podcast focuses on Buddy MacKay who passed away last week at 91. You can listen to the Florida History Podcast on Anchor (which hosts our show), Spotify, Google, Apple Podcasts, Radio Public, Breaker, Overcast, Castro or Pocket Casts. Overcast, Castro, Spotify, Radio Public and Breaker have App Store apps for free which enable you to subscribe and listen on your […]

A tribute to one of the greatest Floridians of the last 50 years.

Avianca Airlines, one of the biggest Latin American carriers will expand Florida service inaugurating flights to Tampa in March with nonstops to Bogotá. The carrier will increase its service as well to both Miami and Fort Lauderdale- FLL gets new flights to Medellín and Managua, a route recently dropped by bankrupt Spirit Airlines while MIA […]

Buddy MacKay who passed away Yesterday at 91, is one of the most influential and underrated figures in Florida’s development from backwater to thriving mega-state. His impact has been under-appreciated by Democrats many of whom undercut his Gubernatorial campaign in 1998 in an attempt to selfishly preserve individual political influence both within a post Chiles/MacKay […]

An excerpt from my new book which has been released today in Kindle, Paperback and Hardcover formats It’s also worth noting that since the US banned the importation of new slaves in 1808, Ameila Island had become a critical cog in the smugglers network to bring new slaves from Africa or the West Indies into […]

Why am I so curious about the War of 1812? My book on the conflicts adjacent events in Florida comes out tomorrow. The War of 1812 (which actually ran from 1812-1815 in its declared form) has always fascinated me. The conflict which for whatever reason was consistently glossed over or taught as an incidental event […]

Much was made earlier this year of Kamala Harris being “handed” the Democratic nomination without winning a single primary vote. Well truthfully, primaries weren’t that decisive until 1976 came along a Georgian used a well timed primary in the neighboring state to propel him to the White House. We discuss that and the history of primaries […]

n the early morning hours of August 2015, volunteers of the Jimmy Carter National Historic site began placing signs throughout the historic district which read “Jimmy Carter for Cancer Survivor.” Just the day before the former President and lifelong resident of Plains Georgia had shocked the world revealing that he had cancer. He was 90 […]