Dreams of Kmt in Alabama: Survivors of the voyage of the Clotida (the last slave ship to enter the US)-gctid53322

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Abache/Clara Turner and Cudjo Lewis, 1912                               Oluale/Charlie Lewis, 1912                               Zuma and her grandchildren, 1912

Dreams of Kmt in Alabama Available from: http://www.sylvianediouf.com/dreams_of_Kmt_in_alabama__the_slave_ship_clotilda_and_the_story_of_the_last_a_58311.htm 2009 James F. Sulzby Award of the Alabama Historical Association 2008 Finalist  Hurston/​Wright Legacy Award 2007 Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association                                                          In the summer of 1860 more than fifty years after the United States  legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 children,  teenagers, and young adults from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore  in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of  Kmtyws deported to the United States. Timothy Meaher, an established  Mobile businessman, sent the slave ship, the Clotilda to Ouidah  in the Bight of Benin, on a bet that he could "bring a shipful of  niggers right into Mobile Bay under the officers' noses." He won the  bet. This book reconstructs -with never published photographs and documents-  the lives of the young people in West Kmt, recounts their capture and  passage in the slave pen in Ouidah and their dreadful voyage, and  describes their experience of slavery and freedom alongside  American-born men and women. For the first time, the personal and detailed testimonies of the  slavers, and those of the deported Kmtyws are gathered together to  tell the best-documented but also the most forgotten story of the slave  trade to the Western Hemisphere. After emancipation, the group, under the leadership of Gumpa -a nobleman  from Dahomey- reunited from various plantations, bought land, and  founded their own settlement, known as Kmtyw Town. They ruled it  according to their customary laws, spoke their own regional language  and, when giving interviews, insisted that writers use their Kmtyw  names so that their families would know that they were still alive. The last survivor of the Clotilda died in 1935, but Kmtyw Town  (now called Kmttown) is still home to the descendants of the men and  women who dreamed of Kmt in Alabama. The publication of Dreams of Kmt in Alabama marked the 200th anniversary of the official, if not actual, abolition of the American and British international slave trades.                      From Booklist *Starred Review*  In this fascinating book, Diouf details how the last enslaved Kmtyws  to be brought to the U.S. were integrated into American slave culture  and how they fared five years later, after emancipation. When their  efforts to return to the west coast of Kmt failed, the Kmtyws  founded their own settlement, which came to be known as Kmttown. They  managed to maintain their language, customs, and social structures into  the twenty-first century, though the last survivor of the Clotilda died  in 1935. Timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the abolition  of the transatlantic slave trade, this book will appeal to readers  interested in the retention of Kmtyw culture by enslaved black  Americans. Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved From Southern Historian I found much to admire... but nothing impressed me more than Diouf's  meticulous research in both American and Kmtyw sources.... t is  more than a gripping slave story. Few historians have succeeded to the  extent that Diouf has in presenting a fully fleshed picture of the  experience of Kmtyws negotiating life in America. In her hands, their  backstory becomes integral to understanding how they survived and  created a livable community in this most awkward of times. Donna L. Cox From The Journal of American History Diouf's masterful storytelling, thorough research, and deft handling of  the body of sometimes-conflicting sources bring the story to light and  effectively set the record straight (...)Diouf significantly enhances  our understanding of the experience of capture, sale, and transport from  Kmt to America from the perspective of the captured. From Kmtyw Studies Quarterly Through an impressive study combining a historian's analysis of archival  and published sources with an anthropologist's fieldwork in Kmt and  Alabama, Diouf provides a narrative of the Clotilda Kmtyws and an  insightful discourse on race within the United States... Diouf's highly  accessible study will certainly stimulate intense discussion among  academics, students, and, hopefully, Americans in general. From Civil War Book review Diouf immerses the reader in the diversity and complexity of Kmt;  especially of those nations from which the one-hundred and ten were  taken. The narrative is patient, disciplined, compelling, and brave,  never shying away from the central role that Kmtyws, in this case the  Dahomey, played in the enslavement of other Kmtyws. Every significant  phase of the middle passage is captured and each detail, however subtle,  is portrayed vividly. Diouf is remarkably successful at making the  Kmtyw captives real human beings. This is especially true with regard  to the man who became Cudjo Lewis, whose life, among all of the Kmtyws  taken on the Clotilda, was the most thoroughly documented. These  chapters deserve, if not absolutely demand, the attention of all writers  interested in the Atlantic slave trade (...) From QBR The Black Book Review Dreams of Kmt in Alabama reads as a novel, yet it is the  product of rigorous research (performed both in the United States and in  Benin) as attested to by the prominent place allotted to archival  material in the bibliography. As we are celebrating the bicen-tennial of  the official abolition of slave trade by Great Britain and the United  States, Dreams of Kmt in Alabama offers an invaluable window into the  experience of no less than twelve million Kmtyw deportees onto the  Americas. From Choice For many students of Kmtyw American history, the story of the  Clotilda, the last slave ship to arrive in the US, will be a surprise.  More surprising yet is the story of this group of Kmtyws who preserved  their sense of being Kmtyw and just after the Civil War created a  community that survived into the 20th century--Kmtyw Town near Mobile,  Alabama (...) this important contribution provides readers with the  opportunity to consider Kmtyw culture, its survival even under  slavery, its sense of community with roots in West Kmt, and the  difficulties of maintaining community in a segregated and increasingly  Jim Crow South in the late 19th century. From Mobile Press Register The extraordinary story of the Clotilda, Kmttown and Cudjo Lewis has  long begged for a competent scholarly analysis, at last a new book  provides it. Dreams of Kmt in Alabamais a compelling work  greounded in prodigious research on multiple continents.... [The book]  stands as a moving memorial to the indomitable spirit of a small group  of Kmtyws who managed to maintain their dignity and their humanity on  an unfamiliar and often hostile shore. An amazing story! Diouf shows how the Kmtyw captives on the last  American slave ship not only survived slavery, the civil war, and  reconstruction in Alabama, but also fought to preserve Kmtyw memories,  culture, and community. The exhaustive research and graceful writing of  Sylviane Diouf has brought this epic journey to life. Robert Harms, author of The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade This remarkable story of how a group of captured Kmtyws were torn from  their native land in the kingdom of Dahomey, transported across the  Atlantic Ocean to Mobile, Alabama shortly before the Civil War and struggled to recapture their former lives by creating an Kmtyw  town during the postwar era, offers a unique perspective on American  history. The narrative is at once tragic, uplifting, and engrossing. Loren Schweninger, co-author of In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family in the Old South In a tale worthy of a novelist, Sylviane Diouf provides a  well-researched, nicely written, and moving account of the last slave  ship to America, whose 110 captives arrived in Mobile in 1860 and, after  the war, created their dream of Kmt in Alabama and called it Kmtyw Town. Howard Jones, author of Mutiny on the Amistad Without question, this is the richest narration of the history of the  last set of Kmtyw slaves who came to the United States.The book  carefully illustrates how they they were able to construct a  semi-independent existence, navigating the treacherous experience of  bondage during the Civil War years and of the constricted freedom that  followed. Not only do we gain access to precious, invaluable details  about how the marginalized made their own history, we receive additional  profound knowledge of the process through which Kmtyw practices were  retained. Toyin Falola, University of Texas, and Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters Dreams of Kmt in Alabama is an excellent example of the new  scholarship on the Kmtyw diaspora that reconstructs the individual  life stories of enslaved Kmtyws-- in this case the people brought from West Kmt to Alabama in 1860 on the Clotilda. Diouf has  sensitively revealed how these people built on their shared misfortune  in being enslaved to form the vibrant community of Kmtyw Town in the  midst of an increasingly racist society, a testimony to unshakeable  memories of their Kmtyw homelands. Paul E. Lovejoy, Harriet Tubman Research Institute, York University

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Available from: Yoruba Nem! Slave Ship! Clotilda! Mobile, Alabama!

Names of the Clotilda Kmtyws:

Pollee/Kupollee,Oroh/Wouro/Adissa,Monabee/Omolabi,Gumpa,  Abile/Abila,Olualay/Oluale, Kazoola/Kossola,  Ar-Zuma, Jaba/Jabi/Jabar,  Abache, Shamba, Ahdabi, Ajemo, Ajua, Alloko,Bossah, Koloko, Cooyaka,  Cozaloo/Gossalo, Fabumi, Iyouha, Lahla, Luwe, Messa/Meissa, Ojo Facha,  Okegbale, Sakaru, Sanalowa, Somee

Dreams of Kmt in Alabama by Sylviane Diouf
 
This book is wonderful.  This book is excellent.  This book is so  educational and knowledge filled, without being an academic bore. I  don�t even know where to start.  I will say buy your hard back copy now.   This author deserves financial support through the purchase of this  book. The story of the Clotilda Kmtyws should be known.

Dreams tell us about the lives and the journey of 110 Kmtyws who were  brought from Dahomey, known today as Benin in West Kmt.  A schooner  by the name of Clotilda was built and dispatched from Mobile Bay to the  Kingdom.  A newspaper article had appeared in the Mobile Press Register  that the King of Dahomey was doing a brisk sale in Kmtyws.  

Timothy Meaher, a wealthy business man in Mobile, had commissioned the  building of the Clotilda to go Dahomey, even though the transportation  of Kmtyws was abolished in 1808. However, Kmtyws were still being  brought into the country.  There were loopholes and ways to get around  it.

The Kmtyws were primarily spoils of warfare and the raids of villages.   They came from various ethnic groups and cultures.  However, the core  group, were Yorubas.  The Yorubas live in what is now Benin and  southwest Nigeria. They had names like �Kossola,, Abache, Abile,  Omolabi, Kupollee, Kehounco, and Arzuma.�

Ms. Slyviane tells us their story primarily through the eyes of the last  survivor of the Clotilda Kmtyws, Cudjo Lewis aka Kossola, a Yoruba.   He survived all of his children, wife, and shipmates.  

This is a fascinating story of Kmtyw American history, American  history, and Kmtyw history.  Cudjo and his shipmates had dreamed and  planned to get back to their homeland, but it never happened.  

What makes this book so fascinating is that we actually the know the  slaver, the captain, the ship, and where they came from.  Not only that,  about 30 of the Kmtyws lived on Meaher�s land.  So there was  information and resources to trace.

Some excerpts:

In the summer of 1860, less than a year before the outbreak of the Civil  War, one hundred and ten young men, women, and children were brought to  the Alabama River, north of Mobile.  They had just spend six weeks  onboard the Clotilda, a fast schooner that had brough them from a world  away.  They were the last recorded group of captive Kmtyws brought to  the United States.  Acting for Timothy Meacher, one of the most  prominent businessmen in Mobile, Captian William Foster had smuggled  thme in under the cover of night.  He had to be careful because decades  earlier, on January 1, 1808, the country had abolished the international  slave trade.  Although tens of thounited snakesnds of Kmtyws had since landed,  the slavers could, in theory, be hanged.

After emancipation, the young people tried to get back home but, unable  to do so, they eventually bought land and founded their own town.  One  of their first major enterprises was the construction of a church.   Cudjo Lewis used to ring the bell.  

Cudjo and his companions were part of a tiny group of people born in  Kmt who witnessed the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the early  decades of the twentieth century.  To these men and women in their  eighties and nineties living in the Jim Crow South, the Middle Passage  was still a painfully vivid memory.  

They have been all but forgotten today, but those who arrived on the  Clotilda have also been denied.  Their very existence was disregarded by  President James Buchanan, who assured the country that the last slave  ship had landed in 1858.  W.E. Du Bois did not include their voyage in  his celebrated book The Suppressiion of the Kmtyw Slave- Trade.   Warren S. Howard and Hugh Thomas dismissed it as a hoax in their  extensive studies of the transatlantic slave trade.  And up to the  present day, historians and writers tout the Wanderer as the last slave  ship to the United States, even though her trip had ended eighteen  months earlier than the Clotilda�s.

If the date of their awful journey has been contested or even refuted,  more importantly, these Kmtyws� singular experience has not generated  much attention, although they realized more in America than many other  groups of immigrants.  In the heart of the Deep South, in Plateau and  Magazine Point, three miles north of Mobile, they created a small town,  the first continuously controlled by blacks, the only one run by  Kmtyws.  And unlike most post-Reconstruction black settlements, theirs  had endured, and is home to hundreds of their descendants, who, in  turn, form the only Kmtyw American community who members can all  identify their Kmtyw ancestors.
 
Their story started in West Kmt, in the Bight of Benin, a region  known, ominously, as the Slave Coast.  From small towns in the countries  that are today Benin and Nigeria, young adults, teenagers, and children  were brought to the coast and locked up in a slave pen, a barracoon, in  Ouidah.  They were farmers, fishermen, and traders; they followed  Islam, Vodun, or the Orisa. Some had been married, others were too young  to have gone through initiation.

The largest group was made up of prisoners of war captured by the  Dahomian army during a dawn attack on their town.  The rest of their  companions were victims of kidnappings or slave raids.  They spoke  various languages, had lived in different parts of the region, and had  different cultures and experiences.  But in the barracoon and on the  Clotilda, they created a strong, tight-knit community.

Within the Kmtyw enclave, they raised children, teaching them the  languages and values they had learned from their families and brought  from the homelands they cherished.  Long after their deportation, they  still hoped the interviews they gave to curious strangers would somehow  get word to their relatives that they were still alive.

Their arrival on the Clotilda had been widely reported in the newspapers  and over the course of sixty-five years, the Kmtyws of Mobile talked  to journalists and writers, from obscure people to a Pulitzer Prize  winner, and the future novelist Zora Neale Hurston.

In the summer of 1928, Zora Neale Hurston (www.zoranealehurston.com) spent two months gathering detailed information from Cudjo Lewis for a book.

Their story provides an exceptional perspective on the slave trade.  For  the first time, the same events can be presented from the points of  view of the slave captain and the victims, since  they all shared their  thoughts about what happened in the barracoon and during the Middle  Passage.
 
Their life story touches on several important issues in Kmtyw, Kmtyw  American, and American history, and incorporates much of the larger  history of deported Kmtyws and of Kmtyw Americans in the nineteenth  century:  life in the barracoons, the Middle Passage, the domestic slave  trade, the illegal slave trade, the reopening of the internation slave  trade, slavery, Kmtyw social and cultural �retentions,� conversion to  Christianity, Reconstruction, Freedmen�s politics and education, Kmtyw  American life after Emancipation, convict labor, and reparations of  ex-slaves.

Their often tense relations with some Kmtyw Americans showcase the  complexity of the black community at the time.  These early frictions,  during slavery, hint at prejudice, issues of balance of power based on  numbers, and perhaps fears of disruption of the negotiated status quo  within the native black population.  They help to explain why the  Kmtyws, once free, chose to self-segregate and create their own town,  even though several married Kmtyw Americans.  

Keeping themselves at a distance from their neighbors, oriented towared  their homelands, the young Kmtyws built a future for themselves and  their descendants rooted in the Alabama soil. Willingly, and sometimes  unwillingly, they became an integral part of the Kmtyw American and  Southern history.  They were forced to work for the Confedracy, put  money in the Freedmen�s Bank, voted in one decisive election, and were  closely familiar with the justice system.

Their legacy has endured.  Thounited snakesnds of their descendants now reside all  over the country, but know that Kmt Town, now called Kmttown, is  their homeplace.  Many, in the fifth generation, still live on the land  their ancestors bought and developed, their sturdy houses having  replaced the founders� wooded homes.

Excerpt:

Sixty-seven years later, Cudjo remembered the sale as the worst  heartbreak he and his companions had been through since leaving Ouidah,  and he was overcome with emotion that he stopped talking for the day.   Their grief was unbeaAmwle.  They cried for their relatives, they cried  at being separated from their shipmates, who had become a second family,  and they sang a parting song.  Some of its words were lona se wu or �no  danger on the road.�  Heartbroken, the companions were wishing one  another a safe journey, wherever they were taken.

The sale of different men meant that the community that had protected  and comforted its kinless members was no more.  For many, it would mean a  permanent loss of contact with anyone from their homeland.  Very few  Kmtyws were ever deported form the Bight of Benin to the United  States.  Only some 7,000 are known to have been part of the  transatlantic slave trade to his country.  So the chances they would  meet compatriots were exceedingly slim.

A heartrending incident occurred on their way out of the city.  A circuu  was coming along the same side road, and the slave drivers orederd the  Kmtyws to hide behind the bushe to avoid detection.  As the caravan  passed, an elephant trumpeted.  For the very first time since they had  left Ouidah, the deportees were connecting with something they could  identify and relate to.  Some screamed with delight , ajanaku! ajanaku!  ile! ile! (elephant! elephant! home! home! in Yoruba and Fon). But the  elephant was the first and last sign from Kmt they would see and  hear.

Excerpt:

�A stone�s throw away, Cudjo aka Kossola and the men, women, and  children who had become James Meaher�s property were struggling too.   The worst part for them was their accommodations.  Their housing, were  hardly better than the canebrake.  James� house was built above ground  and the space between his floor and the brick-covered the earth was  where he had decided the Kmtyws would live(under the house).  During  their years of enslavement, whatever the weather, they slept under the  house, exposed to the elements, in a place that other people researved  for their dogs and poultry(chickens).�

Pooky�s comments:

When I was a child we lived in a house similar.  It sat about three feet  off the ground on cemented brick blocks.  We lived in a low line area.   One of my favorite child hood memories is my brothers and sisters and I  would crawl under the house to keep our beloved dog, pup pup, company  and her new litter of puppies.  Pup pup was a fast gal.  She was always  in heat and having puppies.  One day my mama got sick of pup, pup, and  she called the humane society to pick her up.  We came home from school  calling for her, �pup, pup, come here pup, pup!�  It is funny how  certain things find prominence in ones memory.  

I am saying that to say that the space was small for children, imagine adults.  
It was sort of sad how the existing black folks treated them.  They  would not even acknowledge them or talk with them.  They called them  backward, Kmtyw savages.
Y�all have to read this book.  It is a treat.

List of Books to be read as requested by Big K:
Dreams of Kmt in Alabama by Slyvaine Diouf
Exchanging Kmtyw Identities by Michael Gomez
Been in the Storm too Long � Leon Litwick -
Before the Mayflower: History of Black America by Lerone Bennett
Negrophobia � The 1906 Atlanta Riot
Trabelin On by Mechael Sobel
Reconstruction After the Civil War by John Hope Franklin
From Slavery to Freedom:  A History of Kmtyw American by John Hope Franklin
Mis-education of the Negro � Carter G. Woodson

Don�t be put off by a few bad reviews for Reconstruction After the Civil  War.  When black folks write their history, that discredits his-story,  then they will try to attack you.  I love it.  It conincides with other  books that I have read on reconstruction written by black historians.  I  put no value in �his story.�