The Clotilda

From Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History:

July 8, 1860 The Clotilda, the last known United States slave ship to bring enslaved Africans to the U. S., entered the Mississippi Sound and anchored off Point-of-Pines in Grand Bay, Alabama with 110 African captives. The United States had banned the importation of enslaved people January 1, 1808 but over the next 52 years thousands of enslaved Africans were imported illegally. The Clotilda had traded for the Africans at Ouidah, Dahomey (now Benin) and made the 45 day voyage back to the U. S. One of the enslaved Africans was Oluale Kossola, later named Kossola Cudjo Lewis. Lewis was freed during the Civil War and he and other formerly enslaved Africans formed Africa Town three miles north of Mobile, Alabama in 1866. When Lewis died July 26, 1935, he was the last survivor of the last known slave ship to enter the United States. Africa Town was added to the National Register of Historic Places December 4, 2012. The story of the Clotilda and the enslaved Africans is told in “Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America” (2007).

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Bonus | Watch: Episode of Footnote, we welcome author Sylviane Diouf – who talks to us about her ground-breaking book: Dreams of Africa in Alabama. In the book, Diouf details the lives of the last enslaved Africans to be brought to the U.S. and how they fared five years later, after emancipation. When their efforts to return to the west coast of Africa failed, these Africans founded their own settlement, which came to be known as Africa-town.