Fort Lauderdale and Seminole Education

Frank and Ivy Stranahan operated a trading post and school near the New River as Fort Lauderdale developed from a remote settlement into a town. Ivy taught English and built long relationships with Seminole families.

Education took place within a wider system that often treated English, Christianity and settled agriculture as replacements for Indigenous culture. Advocacy could therefore coexist with paternalism and unequal power.

Mystic Sweet Communion portrays Ivy’s teaching, faith and later advocacy while showing the distrust produced by government pressure and missionary assumptions.