of the Harriet Daniels Hancock Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2010 recipient of the Order of the Pink Palmetto from the SC Pride Movement as well as the 2009 recipient of the Audre Lorde/James Baldwin Civil Rights Activist Award from SC Black Pride. In addition, he is a three-time nominee of the Ed Madden Media Advocacy Award from SC Pride.After having been stationed as the commandant at Fort Michilimackinac, the most important of the outer fur trading posts between Quebec and Montrial, French Lt. Antoine de la Monthe Cadillac devised a plan to preserve the French fur trade in the Americas. In hopes of preventing the Englished from gaining control over the fur trade, Cadillac returned to France to garner backing for his idea which centered on developing a new fort where Lake St. Clair pours into Lake Erie. He believed the location to be extremely strategic as it would give France control of the entire upper lakes region as the most efficient form of inland transportation utilized waterways.

Cadillac received the necessary backing from the French government under the rule of Louis XIV, and so in 1701