The Last Slave Ship

Author: Ben Raines
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2022
Pages: 304
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last slave ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide evidence of the crime, allowing the wealthy perpetrators to escape persecution. 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 on 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 ships 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 slaver, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendant of their African enslavers. This connection bind 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.

Review: The subject matter is fascinating to me, but sometimes you never know what you're going to get in non-fiction as far as a readability goes. As soon as I read the first few pages, I knew I wasn't going to be able to put this book down. Narrative non-fiction and written by a journalist, the story moves along quickly and logically.

For years, generations even, it seems that Clotilda was "just" a story, and it was widely accepted that The Wanderer was the last slave ship to land in the US. This was an emotional and fascinating journey from Alabama to Africa and back again.

I need to visit Mobile, Alabama now. I am so drawn to and intersted in learning more about this area in the years leading up to and during the Civil War.