In 1927, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston travelled to Africatown to interview the last known survivor of the Clotilda, Oluale Kossola (also known as Cudjo Lewis), who died in 1935. Finding that they lacked the necessary resources to return to their West African homes after liberation, they stayed in Alabama, where a group of them went on to establish the village of Africatown, known for its West African communal customs. Upon arrival, the captives remained enslaved in the US for 5 years, until the end of the American Civil War in 1865. The Clotilda carried on board 110 enslaved Africans from the port of Ouidah (in modern-day Benin), who had been trafficked across the Atlantic more than half a century after the US criminalized the international slave trade. The last known slave ship to bring captives to the US docked in Alabama in 1860.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2023
Categories |