The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA

The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA
Author: Natalie S. Robertson
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2008-03-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Download The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Shows how African captives endured capture, imprisonment, the middle passage, and slavery in America only to persevere and found a free and vibrant community in America.

The Last Slave Ship

The Last Slave Ship
Author: Ben Raines
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2023-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1982136154

Download The Last Slave Ship Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The “enlightening” (The Guardian) true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors’ founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day—by the journalist who discovered the ship’s remains. Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts. Traveling from Alabama to the ancient African kingdom of Dahomey in modern-day Benin, Raines recounts the ship’s perilous journey, the story of its rediscovery, and its complex legacy. Against all odds, Africatown, the Alabama community founded by the captives of the Clotilda, prospered in the Jim Crow South. Zora Neale Hurston visited in 1927 to interview Cudjo Lewis, telling the story of his enslavement in the New York Times bestseller Barracoon. And yet the haunting memory of bondage has been passed on through generations. Clotilda is a ghost haunting three communities—the descendants of those transported into slavery, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendants of their fellow American enslavers. This connection binds these groups together to this day. At the turn of the century, descendants of the captain who financed the Clotilda’s journey lived nearby—where, as significant players in the local real estate market, they disenfranchised and impoverished residents of Africatown. From these parallel stories emerges a profound depiction of America as it struggles to grapple with the traumatic past of slavery and the ways in which racial oppression continues to this day. And yet, at its heart, The Last Slave Ship remains optimistic—an epic tale of one community’s triumphs over great adversity and a celebration of the power of human curiosity to uncover the truth about our past and heal its wounds.

Dreams of Africa in Alabama

Dreams of Africa in Alabama
Author: Sylviane A. Diouf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2009-02-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199723982

Download Dreams of Africa in Alabama Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In the summer of 1860, more than fifty years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. Timothy Meaher, an established Mobile businessman, sent the slave ship, the Clotilda , to Africa, on a bet that he could "bring a shipful of niggers right into Mobile Bay under the officers' noses." He won the bet. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women. After emancipation, the group reunited from various plantations, bought land, and founded their own settlement, known as African Town. They ruled it according to customary African laws, spoke their own regional language and, when giving interviews, insisted that writers use their African names so that their families would know that they were still alive. The last survivor of the Clotilda died in 1935, but African Town is still home to a community of Clotilda descendants. The publication of Dreams of Africa in Alabama marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association (2007)

African Town

African Town
Author: Charles Waters
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2022-01-04
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0593322894

Download African Town Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse. Cover may vary. In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 14 distinct voices, including that of the ship that brought them to the American shores and the founder of African Town, this powerfully affecting historical novel-in-verse recreates a pivotal moment in US and world history, the impacts of which we still feel today.

Clotilda

Clotilda
Author: James P. Delgado
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2023-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0817321519

Download Clotilda Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"The book documents the maritime history and the 2018/2019 archaeological fieldwork and laboratory and historical research to identify the wreck of notorious schooner Clotilda in Mobile Bay. Clotilda was owned by Alabama businessman Thomas Meaher, who, on a dare, equipped it to carry captured Africans from what is now Benin and bring them to Alabama in 1860, some fifty years after the import of the enslaved was banned. The boat carried perhaps 110 Africans, and, on approaching Mobile Bay, the captives were unloaded and dispersed by river steamer/s to plantations upriver. To hide the evidence, Clotilda was set afire and sunk. Apparently, the site of the wreck was an open secret but lost from memory for a time. Various surveys through the years failed to locate the ship. In 2018, Al.com reporter Ben Raines identified a shipwreck near Twelvemile Island, and the story attracted international attention. Researcher partners, including Delgado and coauthors in the crew, determined that this was not the Clotilda. In 2019, on another investigative mission to locate the Clotilda, Delgado and crew compared the remains of a schooner and determined that it was the Clotilda. The Alabama Historical Commission and the descendent community of Africatown, where survivors of the Clotilda made their lives post-Emancipation, are making plans for commemoration of the site and the remains of the ship, if it is possible to salvage and preserve out of water. The book takes two tacks. First it serves as a nautical biography of Clotilda. After reviewing the maritime trade in and out of Mobile Bay, it places the Clotilda within the larger landscape of American and Gulf of Mexico schooners and covers its career before being used as a slave ship. Delgado et al. reconstruct Clotilda's likely appearance and characteristics. The second tack is the archaeological assessment of the wreck. The book also places the wreck within the context of a ship's graveyard in a "back water" of the Mobile River. Delgado et al. discuss the various searches for Clotilda. Detailing of the forensic and other analyses shows how those involved concluded that this wreck was indeed the Clotilda"--

Barracoon

Barracoon
Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 006274822X

Download Barracoon Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

New York Times Bestseller • TIME Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 • New York Public Library’s Best Book of 2018 • NPR’s Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 • Economist Book of the Year • SELF.com’s Best Books of 2018 • Audible’s Best of the Year • BookRiot’s Best Audio Books of 2018 • The Atlantic’s Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered • Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018 • The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Books 2018 • “A profound impact on Hurston’s literary legacy.”—New York Times “One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison “Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece.”—Alice Walker A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past—memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

Historic Sketches of the South

Historic Sketches of the South
Author: Emma Langdon Roche
Publisher:
Total Pages: 190
Release: 1914
Genre: Slave-trade
ISBN:

Download Historic Sketches of the South Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Music Is History

Music Is History
Author: Questlove
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2021-10-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1647001846

Download Music Is History Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

New York Times bestselling Music Is History combines Questlove’s deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years—now in paperback Focusing on the years 1971 to the present, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapes, whether investigating how the blaxploitation era reshaped Black identity or considering the way disco took an assembly-line approach to Black genius. And these critical inquiries are complemented by his own memories as a music fan and the way his appetite for pop culture taught him about America. A history of the last half-century and an intimate conversation with one of music’s most influential and original voices, Music Is History is a singular look at contemporary America.

Hero of Hispaniola

Hero of Hispaniola
Author: Christopher Teal
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2008-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Download Hero of Hispaniola Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

We know Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as two of today's most high-profile African American political figures, but who paved the way for these notable diplomats? More than one hundred and thirty years ago, Ebenezer D. Bassett served as the first black United States ambassador. In the midst of the aftermath of the Civil War, the U.S. government broke the color barrier by naming this leading educator, abolitionist, and activist to the controversial post of ambassador to the hemisphere's Black Republic - Haiti. For the first time, a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal would have as its representative abroad someone previously less than equal under the law. This movement toward equality proved to be a force impossible to turn back, leading to a wider acceptance of blacks in U.S. foreign policy. This book lays bare the struggles Bassett faced as a pioneer of racial integration, helping to secure Bassett's legacy as the first African American political figure, a man who not only altered the American political structure, but led the way for all future civil rights advocates. This book highlights Bassett's achievements, which directly contributed to the racial revolution in the U.S. These include being appointed the first African American diplomat and chief of a U.S. diplomatic mission, leading the integration of public schools, and fighting for equal rights alongside revolutionaries such as Frederick Douglass. Bassett played a critical role in foreign affairs during the late 19th century, the formative years of American expansionism in Latin America and the Caribbean. 2008 marks the 100th anniversary of Bassett's death. Though he is long forgotten by history, his legacy as an innovator, activist, and diplomat lives on, and his life story—a tale of intelligence, integrity, and bravery—serves as an inspiration to patriotic Americans of all races and backgrounds. Hero of Hispaniola secures Bassett's legacy as the first African American political figure, a man who not only altered the American political structure, but led the way for all future civil rights advocates to follow.

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave
Author: Willie Lynch
Publisher: Ravenio Books
Total Pages: 15
Release:
Genre: History
ISBN:

Download The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Willie Lynch, a British slave owner from the West Indies, stepped onto the shores of colonial Virginia in 1712, bearing secrets that would shape the fate of generations to come. Within this manuscript, allegedly transcribed from Lynch’s speech to American slaveholders on the banks of the James River, lies a blueprint for subjugation. Lynch’s genius lay not in brute force but in psychological warfare. He understood that to break a people, one must first break their spirit. His methods—pitiless and cunning—sowed seeds of distrust, pitting slave against slave, exploiting vulnerabilities, and perpetuating a cycle of suffering. This document sheds light on the brutal realities of slavery and the ways in which its legacy continues to shape contemporary society