The Black Seminoles is a term used by modern historians for the descendants of free blacks and some runaway slaves (maroons), mostly Gullahs who escaped from coastal South Carolina and Georgia rice plantations into the Spanish Florida wilderness beginning as early as the late 17th century. By the early 19th century, they had often formed communities near the Seminole Indians.

Together, the two groups formed a multi-ethnic and bi-racial alliance. Today, Black Seminole descendants still live in Florida, rural communities in Oklahoma and Texas, and in the Bahamas and Northern Mexico. In the 19th century, the Florida "Black Seminoles" were called "Seminole Negroes" by their white American enemies and Estelusti (Black People), by their Indian allies. Modern Black Seminoles are known as "Seminole Freedmen" in Oklahoma, "Black Indians" in the Bahamas, and Mascogos in Mexico. The Black Seminole Scouts served in the United States Army during the 19th century.

The Spanish strategy for defending their claim of Florida at first was based on organizing the indigenous people into a mission system. The mission Native Americans were to serve as militia to protect the colony from English incursions from the north. But a combination of raids by South Carolina colonists and new European infectious diseases, to which they did not have immunity, decimated Florida's native population. After the local Native Americans had all but died out, Spanish authorities encouraged renegade Native Americans and runaway slaves from England's southern colonies to move south. The Spanish were hoping that these traditional enemies of the English would prove effective in holding off English expansion.

John Horse (1812–1882), also known as Juan Caballo, Juan Cavallo, John Cowaya (with spelling variations} and Gopher John, was a Seminole-African American who acted as a military adviser to the chief Osceola and a leader of Black Seminole units against United States troops during the Seminole Wars in Florida. He led a number of Black Seminoles to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) during Indian Removal. When they faced continuing threats from slave raiders there, he led a group to Mexico, where they achieved freedom in 1850, years before the American Civil War and . After the American Civil War, Horse and some of his followers were recruited by the United States Army to serve as scouts in the West. They and their families settled near

John Horse, called Juan Caballo as a child, may have been born and raised as a slave in Micanopy, former Spanish Florida. John Horse assumed the surname of his owner, Charles Cavallo (who may also have been his father). "Horse" is the meaning of Cavallo. His mother may have been of mixed African-Indian parentage, and was possibly owned by Charles Cavallo, who was possibly of Indian-Spanish parentage. They also had a daughter, Juana (spelled "Wannah" or "Warner" in some sources). Not much is known about Charles Cavallo. He did not appear to treat his two mixed-race children as slaves.

Jan Rynveld Carew (born 24 September 1920 in Agricola, Guyana) is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. His works, diverse in form and multifaceted, make Jan Carew an important intellectual of the Caribbean world. His poetry and his first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast, were significant landmarks of the West Indian literature then attempting to cope with its colonial past and assert its wish for autonomy. Carew also played an important part in the Black movement gaining strength in England and North America, publishing reviews and newspapers, producing programs and plays for the radio and the television. His scholarly research drove him to question traditional historiographies and the prevailing historical models of the conquest of America. The way he reframed Christopher Columbus as an historical character outside his mythical hagiography became a necessary path in his mind to build anew the Caribbean world on sounder foundations.

Jan Rynveld Carew was born 24 September 1920 at Agricola, a coastal village in Guyana also called Rome. Guyana was then a South American colony of the British Empire. From 1924 to 1926, the Carews lived in the United States but Jan Carew and his elder sister had to come back to Guyana after the kidnapping of his younger sister in New York in 1926. The child would be recovered and sent back to her family in 1927. Carew's father lived on several occasions in the United States and Canada, working a while the Canadian company, The Canadian Pacific Railway, and thus crossing the American continent from Halifax to Vancouver. His memories would fuel the imagination of the young Carew. From 1926 to 1938, he was educated in Guyana, first attending the Agricola Wesleyan School, then the Catholic elementary school and then Berbice High School, a Canadian Scottish Presbyterian School, in New Amsterdam. He got his Senior Cambridge Exam in 1938.

Dario Fo (born 24 March 1926) is an Italian satirist, playwright, theatre director, actor, composer and recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. His dramatic work employs comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell'arte, a theatrical style popular with the working classes.

Fo's works are characterised by criticisms of organised crime, political corruption, political murders, most of the Catholic Church doctrine and conflict in the Middle East. His plays often depend on improvisation, commedia dell'arte style. His plays, especially Mistero Buffo, have been translated into 30 languages and, when performed outside Italy, they are often modified to reflect local political and other issues. Fo encourages directors and translators to modify his plays as they see fit, as he finds this in accordance to the commedia dell'arte tradition of on-stage improvisation.

Fo currently owns and operates a theatre company with his wife, actress Franca Rame. Upon awarding him the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature, the committee highlighted Fo as a writer "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden".