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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsZora Neale Hurston's Story of a Former Slave Finally Comes to Print- good read
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/zora-neale-hurstons-story-of-a-former-slave-finally-comes-to-print?mb<snip>
Captain William Foster left Mobile in secret and returned the same way. On July 8, 1860, he dropped anchor in the waters off the coast of Mississippi, hid his cargo below deck, slipped ashore, and travelled overland to fetch a tugboat from Alabama. By then, Foster and his ship had survived a hurricane, a mutiny, an ambush, and a transatlantic journey, but late that Sunday night, after the tug carried him up the Mobile River to Twelve Mile Island, the Captain emptied his hold, dismissed his crew, and set fire to his ship. The Clotilda, Foster would forever after complain, was worth more than his share of what it had smuggled.
Although the international slave trade had been outlawed in America more than half a century earlier, Foster and three co-conspirators, a trio of brothers by the name of Meaher, had purchased a hundred and twenty-five men, women, and children, from Benin and Nigeria, to traffic them into the United States. The plan had been hatched a year before, when one of the Meahers got into an argument: a New Yorker insisted that slaves could no longer be transported across the Atlantic, a Louisiana planter wagered a hundred dollars that it could be done, and Timothy Meaher bet a thousand that he could be the one to do it.
The market for slaves had grown tremendously in the previous five decades. Absent imports, slavers relied on reproduction and relocation for their supply, and, as labor-intensive agriculture shifted to the Deep South, more than a million enslaved people were forced there by ship, rail, and sometimes by foot, in coffles. By the middle of the nineteenth century, domestic slave prices were so high that many planters had begun lobbying to reopen the global trade.
Among them were the Meahers, who had moved from Maine to Alabama, where they owned sawmills, steamboats, plantations, and people. To increase their holdings and win the bet, they recruited Foster, a Nova Scotian shipbuilder, and chose the Clotilda from among his ships. Although the schooner was fast enough to evade capture, it had to be refitted as a slave ship, with a false deck to conceal the necessary barrels of water, rice, beef, pork, sugar, flour, bread, molasses, and rum. Foster sailed from Mobile Bay with papers that claimed he was delivering lumber to St. Thomas, and eleven crew members who had not been told of their real mission. The nine thousand dollars in gold stashed on board to pay for the slaves played havoc with the ships compass, taking it off course; after that, a hurricane caught it just north of Bermuda. While repairing the ship, Fosters men discovered the hidden deck, and threatened to alert the authorities.
misanthrope
(7,411 posts)just like the Meaher family is still quite influential and perched atop the local socio-economic ladder. Most here just shrug it away but if you're someone who values humanity, the tale and its repercussions are revolting. It should be known better beyond the Alabama gulf coast.
If you haven't seen it, you must watch the 2008 award-winning documentary "The Order of Myths." A little bit of its historical data is wrong -- there's no documented evidence Mobile celebrated Mardi Gras before the end of the Civil War -- but its picture of the town's social and racial workings is pretty accurate.
malaise
(268,724 posts)Will check out The Order of Myths
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)There's a Mental Health Center, now private, on Gordon Drive, where I used to work, not that far from Pritchard.
the drugs were moving in pretty fast in that area, as I recall.
Did not know the story of Africa Town at the time.
thanks for the doc.
Hekate
(90,565 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)thanx for the link, my friend.
malaise
(268,724 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America 1st Edition
by Sylviane A. Diouf
gonna be interesting to compare the 2.
Response to malaise (Original post)
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gollygee
(22,336 posts)So far, it's really good.
Just ordering books for my summer reading
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)people hunted them down, kidnapped them even from as far as Canada & moved people born free back into slavery.
I bet that books ship company didn't even have to sail as far as west indies or Benin and Nigeria to fill their hold with 125 black people.
They could buy darker skinned people/kids/ woman kidnapped off the streets/farms of USA, Canada and Mexico.
mountain grammy
(26,599 posts)tonight's bedtime reading. Thanks, Malaise.
the book will go on my reading list.