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Dreams of Africa in Alabama
Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America | Sylviane A. Diouf
5 posts | 4 read | 25 to read
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)
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sprainedbrain
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This book is extremely well-researched and informative. It really focuses on the entire lives of several of the Africans brought to Alabama on the last slave ship just before the civil war, from their lives in Africa, during slavery, and after they were freed and had to struggle to live in reconstruction-era south. Fascinating and infuriating.

The audio is really well done!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

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TheNextBook
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Pickpick

This book was so incredibly informative. I really enjoyed this book. I thought it told the story of Cudjo and his shipmates in a very intimate way presentingg their lives before slavery, on their own land in Africa, then being enslaved in a world completely foreign to them and then once again free but with nothing. This book is simply filled with a history not well known about the last Africans brought to be slaves in the US.

Graywacke Enjoyed following your comments on this and the Neale. 6y
TheNextBook @Graywacke Thank you! I wish I could have posted more but this week time really got away from me! 6y
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TheNextBook
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This book has the ability to rip your heart into pieces with the simplest statements. 😞

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TheNextBook
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Initial thoughts on this #bookpairing: I‘m glad I read Barracoon first. It gave me the grounds to really start this journey with Dreams of Africa in Alabama. The latter is providing a ton of information about the slave trade and how it affected both the US and West African regions with its decline. Not done with Dreams. Will update again later

charl08 Wow. Adding both to the wishlist. 6y
TheNextBook @charl08 As of right now I am definitely suggesting that! Barracoon is a single narrative and I feel like Dreams is the full story. 6y
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TheNextBook
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So I‘m ready to begin this book as a#bookpairing with Hurston‘s Barracoon. I‘m hoping this has a plethora of information about not just Cudjo but about the Clotilda and some of the other Africans on this ship.

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