The schooner Clotilde (or Clotilda) was the last known U.S. slave ship

Slave ship

Slave ships were large cargo ships specially converted for the purpose of transporting slaves, especially newly purchased African slaves to Americas....

 to bring slaves from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay

Mobile Bay

Mobile Bay is an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico, lying within the state of Alabama in the United States. Its mouth is formed by the Fort Morgan Peninsula on the eastern side and Dauphin Island, a barrier island on the western side. The Mobile River and Tensaw River empty into the northern end of the...

 in autumn 1859 (some sources give July 9, 1860), with 110-160 slaves. The ship was a two-masted schooner

Schooner

A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....

, 86 ft long by 23 ft (26x7 m), and it was burned and scuttled

Scuttling

Scuttling is the act of deliberately sinking a ship by allowing water to flow into the hull.This can be achieved in several ways—valves or hatches can be opened to the sea, or holes may be ripped into the hull with brute force or with explosives...

 at Mobile Bay, soon after. The sponsors had arranged to buy slaves in Whydah

Kingdom of Whydah

The Kingdom of Whydah , sometimes written Hueda, was a kingdom on the coast of West Africa in the boundaries of the modern nation of Benin. Between 1677 and 1681 it was conquered by the Akwamu a member of the Akan people. It was a major slave trading post...

, Dahomey

Dahomey

Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...

 on May 15, 1859.
Many descendants of Cudjo Kazoola Lewis

Cudjoe Lewis

Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis is considered the last person born on African soil to have been enslaved in the United States when slavery was still lawful.-Life:...

, the last survivor of the Clotilde, still reside in Africatown

Africatown

Africatown, also known as AfricaTown USA and Africa Town, is a community in Mobile County, Alabama, located three miles north of the city of Mobile. It was formed by West Africans who were among the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the United States...

, a neighborhood of Mobile, Alabama

Mobile, Alabama

Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...

. A memorial bust of him was placed in front of the Union Missionary Baptist Church there.

History

In autumn of 1859, the schooner Clotilde (or Clotilda), under the command of Captain William Foster, arrived in Mobile Bay carrying a cargo of enslaved Africans, numbering between 110 and 160 people. Captain Foster was working for Timothy Meaher, a wealthy Mobile shipyard owner and shipper, who had built the Clotilde in 1856. Local lore relates that Meaher bet some "Northern gentlemen" that he could get around the 1807 law, which prohibited the importation of slaves, without getting caught. The Clotilde was a two-masted schooner, 86 ft (26 m) long and 23 ft (7 m) wide, with a copper-sheated hull

Copper sheathing

Copper sheathing was the practice of protecting the under-water hull of a ship or boat through the use of copper plates affixed to the outside of the hull. It was pioneered and developed by the Royal Navy during the 18th century.-Development:...

. Meaher had learned that West African tribes were fighting, and that the King of Dahomey was willing to trade Africans for US$50 each in the Kingdom of Whydah

Kingdom of Whydah

The Kingdom of Whydah , sometimes written Hueda, was a kingdom on the coast of West Africa in the boundaries of the modern nation of Benin. Between 1677 and 1681 it was conquered by the Akwamu a member of the Akan people. It was a major slave trading post...

, Dahomey

Dahomey

Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...

. Foster arrived in Whydah on May 15, 1859, bought Africans from several different tribes, and headed back to Mobile.

When the Clotilde arrived, Federal authorities had been alerted to the illegal scheme. Fearful of criminal charges, Captain Foster arrived in the port at night and transferred his cargo to a riverboat, then burned the Clotilde before sinking it. The African slaves were distributed to those having a financial interest in the Clotilde venture, with Timothy Meaher retaining 30 of the Africans on his property near Mobile.

Cudjo (aka Cudjoe) Lewis was among the 30 held by Meaher. Mobile was in the Deep South

Deep South

The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...

 and blacks, whether Africans or native-born people, were mostly enslaved, occupying the bottom rung of a racial hierarchy. The Africans brought on the Clotilde could not be legally enslaved; however, they were treated as chattel. The American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 ended six years after the illegal enslavement of the Africans brought aboard the Clotilde.

When freed, the Africans settled at Magazine Point, just north of Mobile, calling their community Africatown

Africatown

Africatown, also known as AfricaTown USA and Africa Town, is a community in Mobile County, Alabama, located three miles north of the city of Mobile. It was formed by West Africans who were among the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the United States...

. They adopted their own rules and leaders, and they established the African Church. The group worked hard: the women used their agricultural skills to raise and sell crops, and the men worked in mills for $1 a day, saving money to purchase the land. When possible, they avoided the whites.

Cudjo Lewis (African name, Kazoola) was the last survivor of the Clotilde journey. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...

, the African-American writer, interviewed Lewis for the Journal of Negro History and made a short film of him. During interviews, Lewis would tell about the civil wars in West Africa, in which members of the losing side were sold into slavery to Africans and Europeans. His group were Tarkars of West Africa. Cudjo related how he had been captured by warriors from neighboring Dahomey

Dahomey

Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...

, taken into Whydah, and imprisoned within a slave compound. He had been sold by the King of Dahomey to William Foster and then transported to the U.S. After the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, the Tarkar people asked the US government to be repatriated, but they were denied.

They then tried to recreate a homeland in Mobile. The group continued speaking their native language and used African gardening or cooking techniques, trying to retain their West African culture. For several years, Cudjo Lewis served as a spokesman for the Tarkar people of Africatown. He was visited by many prominent blacks, among them Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...

. Cudjo Lewis eventually came to believe that Africans had to adopt the new country, even though their white countrymen had treated them brutally. Cudjo Lewis died in 1935 at the age of 94.

In Africatown, the Union Baptist Church has the Cudjo Lewis Memorial Statue. In 1997 descendants and friends mounted a campaign to have the community designated a historical site.

Because Captain Foster burned and sank the ship upon arrival in Mobile Bay

Mobile Bay

Mobile Bay is an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico, lying within the state of Alabama in the United States. Its mouth is formed by the Fort Morgan Peninsula on the eastern side and Dauphin Island, a barrier island on the western side. The Mobile River and Tensaw River empty into the northern end of the...

, archaeological searches continue for the wreck of the Clotilde in the bay.

See also

• The Wanderer (slave ship)
  The Wanderer (slave ship)
  The Wanderer is the last documented ship to bring a cargo of slaves from Africa to the United States . Stories of subsequent mass landings of slaves have been told, but are in dispute...
  
  , a slave ship that arrived November 1858 (prior year)
• La Amistad
  La Amistad
  La Amistad was a ship notable as the scene of a revolt by African captives being transported from Havana to Puerto Principe, Cuba. It was a 19th-century two-masted schooner built in Spain and owned by a Spaniard living in Cuba...
  
  , a cargo ship, in rebellion of slaves from slave ship Tecora
  Tecora
  The Tecora was a Portuguese slave ship of the early 19th century. The brig was built especially for the slave trade after the transport across the Atlantic of human beings as slaves had already been outlawed in the first decade of the 19th century...
  
  

Additional reading

• Diouf, Sylviane Anna. Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

• Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon. Unpublished typescripts and hand-written draft, 1931. Alan Locke Collection, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

• Roche, Emma Langdon. Historic Sketches of the South, New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1914.

• Glennon, Robert M. "Kudjo; The Last Slave Voyage to America, Fairhope, AL: Over the Transom Publishing, Inc. 1999.

External links

• "Last Slave Ship Docks at Mobile", eNotes.com, 2008, webpage: eNotes-Last-slave-ship-docks-Mobile.
• James D. Lockett, "The Last Ship That Brought Slaves from Africa to America: The Landing of the Clotilde at Mobile in the Autumn of 1859", The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 22, 1998, webpage: Questia-source.