The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA: Spirit of Our Ancestors
On the eve of the Civil War, the Clotilda was one of the last slave ships to smuggle African slaves to the U.S. Thirty of the 110 slaves onboard the Clotilda went on to found a settlement, eventually called AfricaTown, which managed to hold on to the language and traditions of their native land. After 15 years of research, from Benin to Alabama, historian Robertson offers a detailed reconstruction of the illegal voyage of the Clotilda and the amazing effort of the Africans to re-create lives for themselves in a strange land, as well as the traditions and cultures of the land they left behind. Robertson talked to Africans on both sides of the Atlantic to explore the complexities of the slave trade and continued cultural connections. She includes photographs of descendants in America and Africa and the ties they continue to share. Robertson’s book is more academic than Sylviane A. Diouf’s Dreams of Africa in Alabama (2007), on the same topic, but this book will also appeal to readers interested in how black Americans have retained African culture. --Vanessa Bush