Despite the US law banning slave trade from Africa which went into effect in 1808, slavers continued to smuggle slaves from Africa to the US. The Clotilda was a ship owned by a man named Timothy Meaher. According to some sources, he made a bet that he could bring a boatload of slaves from Africa to the US. His ship is the last confirmed slave ship to make it to the US. He bought 125 Africans from the King of Dahomey (now Benin). These people were prisoners from a war he was having with other African tribes, mostly from Tamale, now present-day Ghana. As the people he had bought were being loaded onto his ship, he saw two boats approach, and panicked, leaving before all could be loaded, so he ended up with 110 Africans on board. When he made it to the US, he anchored in the bay and waited until nightfall before having the ship towed up the river so that the Africans could be transferred to a steamer, then scuttled the ship so that there was no proof of what he had done. The Africans were then divided among those who had helped finance the venture, Meaher keeping 30 for himself. Meaher and his captain were prosecuted by the US government, but they did not manage to convict either man. After the Civil War, many of the people who had been enslaved because of Meaher returned to his land. There they founded an all-Black community known as Africatown. Many of their descendants still live there today. The land itself is still owned by the Meaher family, who have all been sworn not to speak of the Clotilda for fear of losing their inheritance if they so much as mention the Clotilda.
Sources:
- Wikipedia: Clotilda (slave ship)
- Family Ghost Podcast: The Clotilda Legacy -
- New York Times: Alabama Historians: The Last Known Slave Ship Has Been Found
- Los Angeles Times: Op-Ed: The Clotilda is the only American slave ship ever found. It needs to be preserved
- National Geographic: Last American slave ship is discovered in Alabama
- CNN: Historians Have Been Searching for the Last Slave Ship that Came to America. They Found It in Alabama
- Smithsonian: The Clotilda Has Been Found
- Smithsonian Magazine: The ‘Clotilda,’ the Last Known Slave Ship to Arrive in the U.S., Is Found
- History: Descendants of Last Slave Ship Still Live in Alabama Community
- History: Wreckage of the Last U.S. Slave Ship Is Finally Identified in Alabama
When I first heard the Family Ghost episodes of the story of the Clotilda, I was stunned and horrified. These people were taken against their will to the US more than 50 years after this sort of practice was supposed to be abolished. And yet, the men who did it were never prosecuted, never found guilty, because they destroyed the proof of their crime, and one Black person looks exactly like another, right? So what was a few more slaves in a place drowning in them? These people have their ancestral stories almost intact, because this happened so close to the Civil War, that they pretty much all survived slavery and were alive to tell their descendants where their families were truly from. White people have been breaking the laws for centuries so they don't have to do hard work to make money. Maybe we need to remember who has the money in this country, and where it truly came from.
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