The Survivors of the Clotilda

April 1, 2023

In July 1860, more than a half-century after federal law banned importing humans for the purposes of enslavement, the Clotilda arrived at Mobile Bay, AL, carrying Africans wrenched from their homelands. Durkin, an authority on Black Atlantic history who keynoted the Clotilda Descendants Association 2021 Spirit of Our Ancestors Festival, here traces the fates of five individuals on the ship, one of whom lived to 1940. The remains of the Clotilda were discovered in 2019 along the Mobile River, and salvage efforts are underway. See also Nick Tabor's Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created (Feb. 2023) and Ben Raines's The Last Slave Ship (Jan. 2022). Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2023
Transcontinental trauma and its legacy. Of the 10.7 million Africans displaced to the Americas between the 16th and late 19th centuries, 103 landed in Alabama in July 1860 on the Clotilda. Infamous as the last slave ship to arrive in the U.S., the Clotilda has been the subject of several recent histories and a documentary, which, along with rich archival sources, inform British historian Durkin's vivid recounting. In searing detail, she relates the circumstances of the Africans' capture by Dahomeyan kidnappers, the cruelty they endured as enslaved people, and their valiant efforts to assert their West African heritage when they finally were freed. After a long incarceration in Africa as they waited for slave buyers to arrive, family members were forcibly separated--mothers from infants, husbands from wives--and those chosen were stripped and crammed into the ship's hold for a horrific ocean journey. Although the slave trade had been outlawed in the U.S. since 1808, bans were poorly enforced. A group of pro-slavery conspirators funded the voyage; a wily captain navigated the ship to avoid detection; and when the crew threatened mutiny, they were bribed and threatened into submission. With the Africans offloaded, the Clotilda was set on fire, and its human cargo hidden on a plantation. Although the trafficking scheme soon became known, government officials failed to find the Africans or prosecute the conspirators. One by one, enslavers came to make their purchases. Durkin depicts the "incessant labour and violence" and the culture of virulent racism they found as freed men and women. Nevertheless, they endured: Some established a "self-sufficient community" they called Africa Town. They defied white efforts to keep them from voting, and they married, owned land, and raised families. Generations later, their descendants became active in the civil rights movement. The book includes maps, photos, and artwork. A welcome history of defiance and survival.

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Starred review from November 13, 2023
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.

December 1, 2023
Scholars have written books about the Clotilda--a ship that carried over 100 people of African descent to Alabama in 1860 to enslave them--most notably Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon, released in 2018. British historian Durkin begins with Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis, whose story Hurston recorded in 1928, detailing how Lewis and other residents of his town, Tarkar, were kidnapped from the Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day southern Benin). But Durkin also goes into great depth to highlight the stories of many of the other previously unknown Clotilda survivors. Her text answers questions about the conditions on the ship, the enslaved people's religious beliefs, the plantations they were sent to, and how they survived their unspeakably cruel enslavement. She discusses how many of the survivors helped Lewis build Africatown, just north of Mobile, and who formed a very special community for years after the Civil War ended. Durkin's book fills in many of the gaps about West Africa and Alabama in the 1860s, and focuses on the survivors of the Clotilda instead of the white men who illegally built the ship. The Survivors of the Clotilda, a comprehensive account of one of the most important parts of American history, is a triumph.

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Starred review from December 22, 2023

The Clotilda was the last ship of enslaved people to travel between Africa and the United States. It carried 110 people from Ouidah, Benin, to Mobile, AL, in the summer of 1860. History Museum of Mobile advisor Durkin (Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham) records the ship's history and the personal accounts of enslaved people to portray the postbellum United States. She begins with vivid details on the kidnapping of the last enslaved Africans sent to the U.S. Their docking in Mobile Bay, AL, becomes the dominant focus of the book. Durkin documents the stories of 103 survivors, from their enslavement on plantations up through the creation of a self-sufficient community called Africa Town. She uses individual biographies to frame what life was like for Black Americans in Alabama after their liberation, and she connects those profiles to the larger shifts in the South, including a link to the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott. VERDICT A highly recommended sweeping saga. Based on a rich archive that includes the survivors' own stories, one of which became the basis for Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon, this title provides a human history of enslaved people and a portrait of the postbellum South.--John Rodzvilla

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