The Horry County Museum presents a lecture by Kevin Kokomoor, Ph.D. on his book, La Florida on Saturday, January 27^th at 1 PM. La Florida explores a Spanish thread to early American history that is unfamiliar or even unknown to most Americans. By focusing on America’s Spanish heritage, this collection of stories challenges how Americans view their past and uncovers the Spanish, not English, influence that drove America’s early history. The book digs into Hispanic and Caribbean history, and how important events in the Spanish colonial world influenced the discovery and colonization of the American Southeast. Learn how Spanish colonialism in Florida sparked British plans for colonization of the continent and influenced some of the most enduring traditions of the larger Southeast.

Kevin Kokomoor is a fourth generation Floridian who grew up in the Tampa Bay area. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in History at the University of South Florida and his Doctorate in Early American History at Florida State University. His first academic position after graduate school was at Coastal Carolina University where he is currently employed. Kokomoor recently published Of One Mind and One Government: The Rise and Fall of the Creek Nation in the Early Republic with the University of Nebraska Press. He has also authored several articles in academic journals, including Journal of Southern History, Georgia Historical Quarterly, Florida Historical Quarterly, Journal of Sport History, and Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He won the Thompson Award for the best article published in Florida Historical Quarterly in 2009 and the E. Merton Coulter Award for the best article published in Georgia Historical Quarterly in 2013. In 2017 he was the Howard H. Peckham Fellow of Revolutionary America at the Clements Library at the University of Michigan.

The lecture will be held in the Museum’s McCown Auditorium located at 805 Main Street, Conway, SC 29526. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 843-915-5320 or email hcg.museum@horrycountysc.gov. For more information about programs for 2024, visit the museum website at www.horrycountymuseum.org.