{"product_id":"dreams-of-africa-in-alabama-the-slave-ship-clotilda-and-the-story-of-the-last-africans-brought-to-america-9780195382938","title":"Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America","description":"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 \u003cem\u003eClotilda\u003c\/em\u003e, 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The last survivor of the \u003cem\u003eClotilda\u003c\/em\u003e died in 1935, but African Town is still home to a community of \u003cem\u003eClotilda\u003c\/em\u003e descendants. The publication of \u003cem\u003eDreams of Africa in Alabama\u003c\/em\u003e marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association (2007)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSylviane A. Diouf\u003c\/strong\u003e is an award-winning author of books on African and African diaspora history and culture. She has taught at Libreville University and New York University and is currently a curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50523488485650,"sku":"9780195382938","price":38.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_20225649-fdb2-46dc-922a-33892062c7b8.jpg?v=1731148970","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/dreams-of-africa-in-alabama-the-slave-ship-clotilda-and-the-story-of-the-last-africans-brought-to-america-9780195382938","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}