[ad_1]
I thought about this while watching director Margaret Brown’s excellent documentary, “Descendant.” My beliefs were supported when I read Brown’s comments about the Clotilda, the slave ship that is her film’s narrative focus. “The story of The Clotilda was not a ‘myth’ or a ‘legend’ as it was often referred to by white people,” she wrote, “but an already present history, just one that was not told or accepted as the dominant ‘American’ narrative.” The ship, built and financed by wealthy Mobile, Alabama resident Timothy Meacher around 1856, was used to bring the last slaves acquired in the international slave trade to America in 1860. Since this type of slave trade had been deemed illegal in America, and was punishable by death, Meacher burned and sank The Clotilda afterwards to cover up his crime.
The descendants of the 110 victims of Meacher’s treachery settled in Africatown, a section of land now incorporated into Mobile, Alabama. The denizens there, past and present, were privy to the first-person narrative of Cudjoe Lewis, once believed to be the only living survivor of the Clotilda. Lewis told his story not only to his kin, but also to author Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote it down for her 1931 book, Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo. We hear Hurston singing some of the songs she learned from her research, and the film acknowledges that she is perhaps the first Black female film director. Written in Lewis’ vernacular, Barracoon was rejected by publishers and didn’t see the light of day until 2018. Meanwhile, everyone who lived in Africatown knew their ancestors’ stories, because oral traditions remain unaffected by the approved narratives peddled by the majority. Many Africatown residents held hope that proof of the Clotilda would someday be found.
“Descendant” begins with comments from a member of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. There’s a possibility that the Clotilda has finally been located. We learn that its use as a slave vessel came from a bet Meacher made with another wealthy White man about whether he could pull off violating the 1807 ban on the international slave trade. The Clotilda’s captain, William Foster, sailed to what was then Dahomey, after Meacher heard that kingdom was selling its enemies into slavery. This puts “Descendant” in an intriguing conversation with the recent Agojie warrior film, “The Woman King,” which also takes place in Dahomey and mentions, though doesn’t explore fully, this aspect of the kingdom’s existence. (Full disclosure: I thoroughly enjoyed “The Woman King.”)
[ad_2]