Dreams of Africa in Alabama : the slave ship "Clotilda" and the story of the last Africans brought to America

In the summer of 1860, more than fifty years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. Timothy Meaher, an established Mobile businessman, sent the slave ship, the Clotilda , to Africa, on a bet that he could "bring a shipful of niggers right into Mobile Bay under the officers' noses." He won the bet. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women. After emancipation, the group reunited from various plantations, bought land, and founded their own settlement, known as African Town. They ruled it according to customary African laws, spoke their own regional language and, when giving interviews, insisted that writers use their African names so that their families would know that they were still alive. The last survivor of the Clotilda died in 1935, but African Town is still home to a community of Clotilda descendants. The publication of Dreams of Africa in Alabama marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association (2007)

Winner of the 2007 Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association, this acclaimed volume tells the moving story of the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves—more than fifty years after the United States abolished the international slave trade. Sylviane A. Diouf reconstructs the lives of 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria who were brought ashore in Alabama in 1860 under cover of night, recounting their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describing their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women. After emancipation, the group reunited from various plantations, bought land, and founded their own settlement, known as African Town. They ruled it according to customary African laws, spoke their own regional language and, when giving interviews, insisted that writers use their African names so that their families would know that they were still alive. African Town is still home to a community of Clotilda descendants.

Eric Love - Civil War Book Review

Diouf immerses the reader in the diversity and complexity of Africa.... The narrative is patient, disciplined, compelling, and brave, never shying away from the central role that Africans played in the enslavement of other Africans.... One puts down this compelling book convinced both of the significance of the Africans at the center of it, and that Diouf has given us a superb history.

Sylviane A. Diouf reconstructs the lives of 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria who were brought ashore in Alabama in 1860 under cover of night, recounting their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describing their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women. After emancipation, the group reunited from various plantations, bought land, and founded their own settlement, known as African Town. They ruled it according to customary African laws, spoke their own regional language and, when giving interviews, insisted that writers use their African names so that their families would know that they were still alive. African Town is still home to a community of Clotilda descendants. --from publisher description Frontmatter Acknowledgments (page ix) Introduction (page 1) Known Africans Deported to Mobile on the Clotilda (page 6) 1: Mobile and the Slave Trades (page 7) 2: West African Origins (page 30) 3: Ouidah (page 55) 4: Arrival in Mobile (page 72) 5: Slavery (page 90) 6: Freedom (page 126) 7: African Town (page 151) 8: Between Two Worlds (page 182) 9: Going Back Home (page 207) Epilogue (page 233) Appendix: The Numbers of the Illegal Slave Trade (page 241) An Essay on Sources (page 245) Notes (page 251) Bibliography (page 295) Index (page 329) Sylviane A. Diouf. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [295]-328) And Index.