The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This outstanding narrative begins describing how just before the Civil War a wealthy southern landowner bet he could bring a load of African slaves into Alabama through the blockade the federal government had set up to enforce the ban on such slave importation. He had a boat, the Clotilda, outfitted specifically for this task and set out to Ouida, Dahomey, then the slave trading capital of Africa. He partially succeeded in his task, although there were setbacks. The first chapters introduce the three main locales: Mobile, Ouida, and Africatown, the community later established by the slaves who were on the ship, the very last one to import slaves to the United States.
The book then goes on to describe how the ship returned with its load, was hidden and burned to conceal the crime, one punishable by death. The author, an investigative journalist and Alabama tour boat guide, is the one who eventually found the ship 160 years later. He tells how information he gleaned from descendants of those slaves and his own knowledge of the rivers and the local history led to this find despite earlier failed attempts by others. The discovery confirmed many of the accounts of the slave descendants and debunked others from many sources. The subsequent history of many descendants, those of slave traders, slaves, and the Africans who sold their fellow Africans to the whites, are all explored. It brings exposure to the reprehensible treatment Africatown received at the hands of the whites in power over the years. It’s fascinating as both a detective story and a social and political exposé.
