Dreams of Africa in Alabama, Sylviane A. Diouf
Dreams of Africa in Alabama, Sylviane A. Diouf
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Dreams of Africa in Alabama
The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America

Author: Sylviane A. Diouf

Narrator: Allyson Johnson

Unabridged: 12 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/08/2019


Synopsis

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 original publication of Dreams of Africa in Alabama marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

About Sylviane A. Diouf

Sylviane A. Diouf is an award-winning historian of the African Diaspora. She is the author of Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons and Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas-named Choice Outstanding Academic Book in 1999. Her book Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America received the 2007 Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association, the 2009 Sulzby Award of the Alabama Historical Association and was a finalist for the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She is the editor of Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies and the coeditor of In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience. A recipient of the Rosa Parks Award, the Dr. Betty Shabazz Achievement Award, and the Pen and Brush Achievement Award, Diouf is a Curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Stacie on May 07, 2018

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I had ever heard the name Clotilda. I had no idea that in 1860, the Clotilda sailed to the west coast of Africa and brought back with it to the United States over one hundred Africans, that were then enslaved in Alabama. I only learned about this because of the......more

Goodreads review by Teri on March 02, 2021

Dreams of Africa in Alabama is Sylviane A. Diouf's exquisitely written narrative history on the last arriving captives of the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the United States. In 1860, on a dare, Timothy Meaher and his brothers from Mobile, Alabama, sent William Foster, captain of their sh......more

Goodreads review by Cherisse on October 24, 2012

Fascinating and extraordinarily well researched. Diouf explores the experiences of the last Africans brought to America as they made sense of a new environment while being informed by their understanding of the world they left behind. Dreams of Africa adds to the rich tapestry of scholarship that ex......more

Goodreads review by Albert on July 28, 2011

I lost interest and did not finish; the tone is much too scholarly, focusing less on a great story and more on details and the different arguments/theses on each. Otherwise, it's the most complete and thorough telling of the Clotilda story.......more

Goodreads review by Marcus on March 09, 2018

A bet.  50 years after the international slave trade was banned, Timothy Meaher bet that he could, "bring a shipful of niggers right into Mobile Bay under the officers' noses."   And in 1860, that slave ship, The Clotilda, arrived in Alabama carrying the last known African imports into slavery. This......more