Debates on reparations for slavery have emerged on national and international levels. However; much of the discourse centers on the legitimate slave trade. Few people are cognizant of the fact that the transatlantic slave trade consisted of both a legal trade and an illegal trade that began after January 1; 1808. Despite statutory prohibitions against slave smuggling; American citizens continued to smuggle African captives into the United States up to and beyond the threshold of the Civil War. The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown; USA is the only well-documented work of serious nonfiction that chronicles the transatlantic smuggling expedition of the slaver Clotilda during the slave trade's illegal period; dramatizing the plight of her captives from the point of capture in the West African interior to the point of disembarkation in Mobile; Alabama in 1860; and tracing the specific means by which the captives triumphed over their tragedy.Thirty members of that fateful cargo established AfricaTown in Alabama; where many of their descendants still live. In 1927; Zora Neale Hurston interviewed Cudjo Kazoola; the last survivor of the Clotilda. In The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown; USA Natalie S. Robertson uses ethnography; cartography; linguistics; and oral history to connect the story of the Clotilda captives to their origins in Africa; through their ordeals on the middle passage; all the way to the issue of reparations in the present day. She incorporates indigenous African perspectives; Hurston's interviews; and sources such as the Clotilda's log; meshing diverse voices into a narrative that reveals the centrality of slavery; Africanisms; and resistance in American culture even today.
#3738309 in Books 2000-07-30Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.21 x .63 x 6.14l; 1.31 #File Name: 0275968510272 pages
Review
1 of 16 people found the following review helpful. A Tour of the Imagination.By Betty BurksMorals Ethics in Journalism.; October 30; 2006Reviewer: Betty Burks (Knoxville; TN) - See all my reviewsHe claims to be a historian; but Jack Neely is a phony using all of his historical 'facts' based on the fiction book; Sutree. If he made this trip with his brother and "reported" their sights; take it as a grain of salt as he makes up imaginary things to sound erudite. Reporters need to strive for the professionalism of major newspapers in large cities to create "mainstream" or "conventional" points of view. This is what media power is really about. At a subsequent meeting to be told about the design for a proposed "passenger friendly" center to wait in out of the elements; only one member of the committee attended; but a city official told the television reporter that the bus station would be 'airport quality.' I have not been in McGhee Tyson but; if it's as primitive as this 'biased' design for the transit center; it's proof of the backwardness of this town -- and the gullibility of the press.Neely's writings are all fiction and opinion; none of it fact in any of the anthologies of Knoxville writers. They are all creative and not historical in any way. He does not read old newspapers; doesn't know how. He is only a studge for Metro Pulse. He pretends to be a historical writer about this town; but there is nothing good or worthwhile in anything he writes now or has written in the past. It is all from his imagination and a book of fiction he calls his Bible.
