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For most Black Americans descended from enslave Africans, there’s no way of tracing back where their ancestors came from. The slave trade ripped families apart, and records from slave ships and plantations often identified enslaved people with multiple or incomplete names. Given this systematic erasure, the story of Clotilda, the last slave ship to reach the U.S., occupies a profoundly unique place in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. Timothy Meaher, a white Southern planter was the owner of the ship who went to Benin, West Africa to bring Africans back to Alabama to be sold and distributed. Cudjo Lewis, a survivor of the ship, realizing they could not go back to Africa after the Civil War, asked Meaher for land to start their own property, and created African Town, 3 miles from downtown Mobile, Alabama and told his story to Zora Neale Hurston. Descendants of Timothy Meaher are alive and well today and are worth close to $55M. Their wealth built upon the backs of enslaved people, whom he used a $20,000 loan to buy . --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/harrietcammock/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/harrietcammock/support