The latest addition to the growing canon of books on the Clotilda and Africatown is a remarkable work of synthesis of value both to those who’ve read everything published so far on the topic, and to newcomers looking for an entry point.
The book is “AFRICATOWN: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created” by Nick Tabor. Published by St. Martin’s Press in late February, it follows a narrative arc broadly similar to that of the award-winning documentary “Descendant:” At the beginning, a retelling of the last voyage of the Clotilda, bringing a cargo of captive Africans into slavery in the United States shortly before the onset of the Civil War and long after such voyages were outlawed. At the end, an accounting of the opportunities and challenges faced by the inhabitants and supporters of Africatown, the settlement founded by some of those captives after the war, a historically unique community that has endured years of encroachment and fragmentation by heavy industry, pollution and destructive roadbuilding.
In a broad sense, it is ground that has been covered before, and not just by “Descendant.” But it has never been covered like this.
Take the voyage of the Clotilda. The first-hand accounts are vivid but sparse: In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Barracoon,” Cudjo “Kazoola” Lewis describes his capture in a slave raid by warriors of Dahomey. Captain William Foster wrote a few pages of memoir about the ship’s trip to Africa and back. Timothy Meaher, the driving force behind the voyage, gave interviews that likely contained some deliberate obfuscation of the truth.
Tabor taps contemporaneous accounts to flesh out these primary sources, building a finer-grained narrative. Other people visited Dahomey in the era when Foster arrived to take possession of Kazoola and other captives; other accounts of slaving voyages were recorded. Using materials such as these, Tabor fleshes out the story, telling more of what the captive and the captain would have experienced as their paths came together in a kingdom alien to both of them. The result is almost novelistic, though the author stays rooted in journalism, keeping clear about the limits of what can be known, what can be guessed, and what inconsistencies remain impossible to resolve.
There’s a tendency in telling this story to skip the Civil War years, saying that the captives were enslaved shortly beforehand and found themselves free at its end. From there, accounts tend to fast-forward through time, as if Africatown existed in a bubble for nearly a century until the outside world began to encroach. In contrast, Tabor builds context to show how the war and its aftermath affected Mobile, and by extension the residents of the region.
The Plateau area was incorporated into Mobile decades ago. To get there from downtown, one makes a short drive up Conception Street Road, through wetlands and past a lumberyard, or up Telegraph Road through a railyard. The two roads form the sides of a handy loop often taken by groups of recreational cyclists. Africatown could hardly be closer.
This book drives home the awareness that it wasn’t anything like this, in the 1800s and early 1900s. The residential clusters that formed Africatown might have been just two to three miles away from downtown, but those were miles of swampy wilderness. Africatown’s isolation helped it survive, as a community where Yoruban was still spoken where African folkways endured. But, as Tabor makes clear, it wasn’t buffer enough to protect it from the tides of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, or even from tension with African-Americans freed from generations of slavery.
The author’s work filling in the timeline helps give a much fuller sense of the eras of Africatown: From a community of Africans stranded in America, to one where children and grandchildren became less versed in the language and customs of their forbears and more fluent in the ways of a new world. From a community where paper mills provided jobs to one where pollution became a blight on quality of life and on the health of many. From an enclave where history was undervalued – by most on the outside as well as some on the inside — to one where it became priceless.
It’s a story told through the lives of some of the community’s champions, fleshed out with context of the changing times in the country and in Mobile, and it leaves one with a clear sense of Africatown’s promise and its fragility. Should Africatown’s history make it a national landmark? Absolutely. Can it, even after all it has endured? Yes.
Will it? That’s a question no book can answer. But this one lays out the stakes as clearly as possible. For those who’ve seen “Descendant” and want to know more, it’s a perfect next step. But even for those who’ve read some of the many sources Tabor draws on, it adds layers of detail and context.
Until the next chapters unfold in real life, this is the state of the art.
“AFRICATOWN: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community it Created” by Nick Tabor, published by St. Martin’s Press, is widely available through bookstores and online booksellers. Tabor will speak in Mobile Tuesday, March 28, at an event presented by the GulfQuest Maritime Museum and the Mobile Public Library. The event starts at 6 p.m. at GulfQuest and will feature Africatown community leader Joe Womack and University of South Alabama historian Kern Jackson. Additionally, Elizabeth Theris-Boone will speak about resources available at the Local History & Genealogy Library in downtown Mobile. For more information on the event, email vlonga@mplonline.org or via phone at 251-545-3366.
The Mobile Public Library has announced an additional opportunity for those unable to attend the event at GulfQuest. The Local History & Genealogy Library at 753 Government St. will host a book signing with Tabor on Wednesday, March 29, at noon