Africatown
Africatown, also known as AfricaTown USA and Plateau, is a historic community located three miles (5 km) north of downtown Mobile, Alabama. It was formed by a group of 32 West Africans, who in 1860 were included in the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the United States. The Atlantic slave trade had been banned since 1808, but 110 slaves held by the Kingdom of Dahomey were smuggled into Mobile on the '' Clotilda'', which was burned and scuttled to try to conceal its illicit cargo. More than 30 of these people, believed to be ethnic Yoruba, Ewe, and Fon, founded and created their own community in what became Africatown.Robertson, Natalie. ''The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA: Spirit of Our Ancestors.'' Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2008. They retained their West African customs and language into the 1950s, while their children and some elders also learned English. Cudjo ''Kazoola'' Lewis, a founder of Africatown, lived until 1935 and was long ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oluale Kossola Aka Cudjo Lewis
Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis ( – July 17, 1935), born Oluale Kossola, and also known as Cudjo Lewis, was the third to last adult survivor of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the United States. Together with 115 other African captives, he was brought to the United States on board the ship ''Clotilda (slave ship), Clotilda'' in 1860. The captives were landed in backwaters of the Mobile River near Mobile, Alabama, and hidden from authorities. The ship was scuttling, scuttled to evade discovery, and remained undiscovered until January 2018. After the Civil War and emancipation, Lewis and other members of the ''Clotilda'' group became free. A number of them founded a community at Magazine Point, north of Mobile, Alabama. They were joined there by others born in Africa. Now designated as the Africatown Historic District, the community was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. In old age Kossola preserved the experiences of the ''Clotilda'' captives by providing ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Clotilda (slave Ship)
The schooner ''Clotilda'' (often misspelled ''Clotilde'') was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859 or July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children. The ship was a two-masted schooner, long with a beam of . U.S. involvement in the Atlantic slave trade had been banned by Congress through the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves enacted on March 2, 1807 (effective January 1, 1808), but the practice continued illegally, especially through slave traders based in New York in the 1850s and early 1860. In the case of the ''Clotilda'', the voyage's sponsors were based in the South and planned to buy Africans in Whydah, Dahomey.David Pilgrim.Question of the Month: Cudjo Lewis: Last African Slave in the U.S.? Jim Crow Museum, Ferris University, July 2005."Black Travel - Soul Of America , Home" (historic sites), Soul of America, 2007, webpageSoulofAmerica-6678 After the voyage, the ship was bu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Timothy Meaher
Timothy Meaher (1812 3 March 1892) was a wealthy Irish-American human trafficker, businessman and landowner. He built and owned the slave-ship '' Clotilda'' and was responsible for illegally smuggling the last enslaved Africans into the United States in 1860. Slave trade The illegal purchasing and transporting of slaves was made as a bet to see if Meaher could avoid the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Meaher reportedly described the bet as "a thousand dollars that inside two years I myself can bring a shipful of niggers right into Mobile Bay under the officers' noses." Meaher sold some of the slaves but took the rest to work for his brother James and himself. Meaher had its captain, William Foster (1825 - 1901), burn and scuttle ''Clotilda'' in Mobile Bay, attempting to destroy evidence of their joint lawbreaking. The wreck was located in 2019. The slaves were freed in 1865, but Timothy Meaher refused to help them return home or provide reparations. He sold them ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mobile River
The Mobile River is located in southern Alabama in the United States. Formed out of the confluence of the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers, the approximately river drains an area of of Alabama, with a watershed extending into Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. Its drainage basin is the fourth-largest of primary stream drainage basins entirely in the United States. The river has historically provided the principal navigational access for Alabama. Since construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, it also provides an alternative route into the Ohio River watershed. The Tombigbee and Alabama River join to form the Mobile River approximately northeast of Mobile, along the county line between Mobile and Baldwin counties. The combined stream flows south, in a winding course. Approximately downstream from the confluence, the channel of the river divides, with the Mobile flowing along the western channel. The Tensaw River, a bayou of the Mobile River, flows alongside to the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mobile, Alabama
Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population within the city limits was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, down from 195,111 at the 2010 United States census, 2010 census. It is the fourth-most-populous city in Alabama, after Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville, Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery. Alabama's only saltwater port, Mobile is located on the Mobile River at the head of Mobile Bay on the north-central Gulf Coast. The Port of Mobile has always played a key role in the economic health of the city, beginning with the settlement as an important trading center between the French colonization of the Americas, French colonists and Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans, down to its current role as the 12th-largest port in the United States.Drechsel, Emanuel. ''Mobilian Jargon: Linguistic and Sociohistorical Aspects of a Native American Pidgin''. New York: ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Redoshi
Redoshi ( 1848 – 1937) was a Beninese woman who was kidnapped and smuggled to the U.S. state of Alabama as a girl in 1860. Until a later surviving claimant, Matilda McCrear, was announced in 2020, she was considered to have been the last surviving victim of the transatlantic slave trade. Taken captive in warfare at age 12 from the Slave Coast of West Africa, she was sold to Americans and transported by ship to the United States, in violation of U.S. law. She was sold again and enslaved on the upcountry plantation of the Washington Smith family in Dallas County, Alabama, where her owner renamed her Sally Smith. Redoshi survived slavery and the imposition of Jim Crow laws during the post-Reconstruction era of disenfranchisement, and lived into the Great Depression. She lived long enough to become acquainted with people active in the civil rights movement; she is the only known female transatlantic slavery survivor to have been filmed and to have been interviewed for a newspa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kingdom Of Dahomey
The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental triangular trade. For much of the middle 19th century, the Kingdom of Dahomey became a key regional state, after eventually ending tributary status to the Oyo Empire. European visitors extensively documented the kingdom, and it became one of the most familiar African nations to Europeans. The Kingdom of Dahomey was an important regional power that had an organized domestic economy built on conquest and slave labor, significant international trade and diplomatic relations with Europeans, a centralized administration, taxation systems, and an orga ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Benin
Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority of its population lives on the southern coastline of the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Porto-Novo, and the seat of government is in Cotonou, the most populous city and economic capital. Benin covers an area of and its population in was estimated to be approximately million. It is a tropical nation, dependent on agriculture, and is an exporter of palm oil and cotton. Some employment and income arise from subsistence farming. The official language of Benin is French, with indigenous languages such as Fon, Bariba, Yoruba and Dendi also spoken. The largest religious group in Benin is Sunni Islam (27 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bayou
In usage in the Southern United States, a bayou () is a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area. It may refer to an extremely slow-moving stream, river (often with a poorly defined shoreline), marshy lake, wetland, or creek. They typically contain brackish water highly conducive to fish life and plankton. Bayous are commonly found in the Gulf Coast region of the southern United States, especially in the Mississippi River Delta, though they also exist elsewhere. A bayou is often an anabranch or minor braid of a braided channel that is slower than the mainstem, often becoming boggy and stagnant. Though fauna varies by region, many bayous are home to crawfish, certain species of shrimp, other shellfish, catfish, frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, American alligators, American crocodiles, herons, lizards, turtles, tortoises, spoonbills, snakes, and leeches, as well as many other species. Etymology The word entered American English via Louisiana French in Louisiana ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War. The Proclamation changed the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers, either by fleeing to Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, they were permanently free. In addition, the Proclamation allowed for former slaves to "be received into the armed service of the United States." On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Its third paragraph reads: That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the U ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Plantations In The American South
A plantation complex in the Southern United States is the built environment (or complex) that was common on agricultural plantations in the American South from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock. Until the abolition of slavery, such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people. Plantations are an important aspect of the history of the Southern United States, particularly the antebellum era (pre-American Civil War). The mild temperate climate, plentiful rainfall, and fertile soils of the southeastern United States allowed the flourishing of large plantations, where large numbers of enslaved Africans or African Americans were held captive and forced to produce crops to create wealth for a white elite. Today, as was also true in the past, there is a wide range of opinion as to what differentiated a plantation from a farm. Typically, th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |