The Survivors of the ‘Clotilda’: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade

Historian Durkin (Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham) provides a sweeping history of the survivors of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land in America. In 1860, more than 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, 110 captives were transported to Alabama by a consortium of wealthy white men. Durkin depicts in harrowing detail their kidnapping and the destruction of their village in what is now Nigeria, the horrific Atlantic crossing, their tormented experiences as enslaved people, and their building of new lives in post–Civil War Alabama. A community founded by the survivors just north of Mobile, called African Town (later Africatown), had laws and customs that preserved the inhabitants’ Yoruba traditions. In Gee’s Bend, another town where survivors settled, residents came to specialize in a celebrated style of African-inspired quilt-making. Durkin tracks the survivors’ descendants, uncovering how some were early participants in the civil rights movement, and how the art and folklore they created was influential during the Harlem Renaissance. Durkin’s in-depth view is based largely on the survivors’ own words and perspectives (some lived into the 20th century and related their stories to various writers, most notably Zora Neale Hurston), and is woven together with her extensive archival research. It’s a stirring saga of resilience that sheds new light on Black life in postbellum America. Photos. (Jan.)