Africatown is the story of the Clotilda, which in 1860 became the last ship to ply the trans-Atlantic slave route from west Africa to the U.S. Nick Tabor recounts first what we know of the 110 people on this voyage who were enslaved and smuggled to America, with a particular focus on the life of Kussola (better known today as Cudjo Lewis), and then the history of the eponymous community founded by several of them in Alabama after emancipation.

The first half of the book was more engrossing to me, with the strong emotional through-line provided by Kussola/Cudjo's story, which is intensely personal and heart-breaking. While the latter half of the book covers some extremely important topics—not least the environmental racism which blighted the lives of Africatown inhabitants in the 20th and into the 21st centuries; the government of both Mobile and the state of Alabama as a whole does not come out of this well, to put it mildly—the lack of a strong mooring personality here makes it feel more disjointed. Despite this, Africatown is an important and all-too-timely read. ( )

Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created by Nick Tabor is a well documented, well-researched book giving the history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship and the human cargo of 110 men, women, and children it brought from Africa to America in 1860, long after the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been banned and just before the start of the Civil War. It covers a lot of history from the capture and kidnapping of Kussola later known as Cudjo Lewis, through the years of slavery, emancipation and the decision of several of the ship mates to purchase land and create their own community first called African Town later Africatown, right up to the present and the descendants’ efforts to make Africatown a national historical site as well as their fight against the environmental racism that eventually surrounded the town.

Tabor uses both primary and secondary sources to tell the story including Zora Neale Hurston’s book Barracoon and is very careful to identify what is actually known and what is speculation. With this amount of history, there seemed the possibility, like too many books of history, to become overly pedantic or devolve into a dry information dump but Tabor manages to avoid either, making this a very interesting, highly readable and, given the political atmosphere today, a very important book.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review ( )

A thoroughly researched and comprehensive exploration of Africatown's history and the on-going struggle to preserve the community. Africatown takes the reader on a journey through history beginning with the kidnapping of Kussola/Cudjo Lewis by the Dahomey Kingdom for sale into slavery and Timothy Meaher's and William Foster's plans to smuggle slaves into the US from West Africa. From there it explores the building of the community after emancipation and the struggles it has faced up to the present day issues of industrial pollution and destruction of historical sites. The author does well in providing context for his sources and sorting out what is likely to be fact versus exaggeration or misinformation. While dry at times, overall it was interesting and told well. ( )