The Clotilda is having a bit of a moment, I think (and rightly so). Last year Ben Raines released his book The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How the Clotilda Was Found, her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning, which became an NPR Best Book of 2022. In 2018 Zora Neale Hurston's work Baracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" was rereleased and this is where I picked up my research of the Clotilda in 2019. Previously, I had only read a few of the news articles that surfaced around the time the ship was found and reading the short Baracoon left me needing more... a lot more.

And here we have Africatown, the latest tome about the Clotilda to be published. For roughly the first half of the book, the author focuses on the history surround the Clotilda's journey to and from Africa and the slaves she picked up. If you have never read anything about the Clotilda before, this will provide a succinct depiction of its history, but I found the history presented in The Last Slave Ship much more engaging.

Africatown has the unique perspective of showing the more recent history of the town through the lens of environmental racism. Along with Flint, this is perhaps one of the most glaring examples of racism in industrialization; factories contaminated the town for generations with pollution that affected the food its citizens ate and coated the town in ash that had to be regularly scrubbed from houses. The book also spends a great amount of time describing the citizens most recent history of fighting potential oil pipelines from running under their water source. Tank farms are also a large environmental concern in the area. This perspective has left me searching for more books on environmental racism, so Tabor did a great job piquing my interest to an aspect of Jim Crow I have yet to explore.

Finally, the end of Africatown discusses some miscellaneous topics that were very interesting to me, including the Meaher's descendants and their secrecy regarding anything to do with the Clotilda. Also discussed is the effort it would take to make Africatown a historical museum and removing blight. All in all, Africatown is an interesting book and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about this one of a kind community.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy of this book. As always, opinions are my own.

This book had a lot of information that was eye opening for me. I sort of expected this book to be similar to Baracoon, but this book is so much better, so much more in-depth, and so much more enlightening. The struggles the residents of Africatown have encountered didn’t dwindle with time. The political, industrial, and environmental aspects of the book were unexpected but are clearly at the heart of the lives of Africatown residents and supporters. I highly recommend this book!

Africatown is an incredible book about a not so well known part of American history. Africatown is a history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to bring slaves to the US, and her descendants. It is extremely well researched, thought provoking and, interesting. Not only is is a fantastic history book, but the discussion of politics was also excellent. This was a perfect book for Black History Month and for any time of the year. Everyone needs to read this important book.

Have you heard about the slave ship Clotilda? If you have, then you should delve into this book so that you can get a full picture of this ship and the finding of it. If not, then you need to pick up this book because this is a missing piece of history that needs to be remembered and celebrated. I highly enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it.

Nick Tabor brought the poor souls on the Clotilda to life, especially Lewis and Cudjo, and evoked so much anger towards Meaher and pity for those unfortunate Africans that were uprooted and abused. A dark time in our nation’s history for sure. I avidly read about their experiences and was so glad that most were able to remain together. They showed so much courage and determination in their quest to own their own land. I cannot imagine their anger and frustration, forced to become slaves, the inhumane situations - hiding in the cane breaks - and being treated as less than human. The research used to bring these characters to life was absolutely amazing.
The social injustice I was aware of but was surprised to read about the differences with the Republican and Democrat political views of what to do with them after they became free. I never heard of the 40 acre land redistribution promise before, but I can’t help but think what a different country the US would be if it had been kept.
I do admit that reading the rest of the book was not as easy or as interesting as the beginning. Their health struggles are very real and I admire their attempts to bring attention to Africatown and those that banded together to create the best lives they could in spite of forces working against them.
Many thanks to Nick Tabor for teaching me important history, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for providing me with an arc of this soon to be published book.

This book is such a fitting read for black history month. Very informative and yet interesting. As a Canadian I feel like this was a bit of history I knew very little about and appreciate that I was able to be educated in such a interesting manner.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for allowing me the opportunity to review this book.

The research on this story was impeccable. I learned more than I had ever expected, but unfortunately the story reads as a history book, not like a story of the characters. If the book would have been written like a novel and followed the characters it could have been really, really good.
Other than that, this is a great telling of the Clotilda being the last slave ship in 1860 and how the lives of the descendants are still alive today. Once again there were many crooked and evil men in power, kind of like no different than today.
Received an ARC from St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for my unbiased review – This one comes in with 4 stars.

This book was a comprehensive history about an important subject that everyone should know about but that, of course, due to the failed schooling in the US, was excluded entirely.
Nick Tabor brings us the last slave ship, the Clotide. Nick also walks us through the history of the town the descendants of that ship created, Africatown. However, it goes even deeper. From the landing in America to present day and stitching in all of the history between from Jim Crowe to Civil Rights to Reconstruction and more. Some sections/historical events are more in depth than others, but this was a calculated effort to highlight how this town has survived the unthinkable.
From basically the beginning it was targeted in environmentally racist ways. You can see the fights the descendants have always fought to try and keep their town going strong. The goes right up to the present where citizens are still rallying for their ancestors and for their home to get to recognition it deserves.
No review I make can do this book justice. Read it. And then keep reading about it and keep learning about all the stuff our education system denies us, because Black history is so important.

Awhile back, I watched the documentary Descendant for work and was amazed by the history of this little town outside of Mobile and the Clotilda. It seemed like fate when I stumbled upon this book, and it was the perfect companion to the documentary I had previously watched on the subject. This book is a more in-depth historical research process that goes all the way back to Africa to trace how we got to where we're at in Africatown in the modern day, and makes an excellent point that this town is being smothered by commercialization. A must-read for understanding African American Studies I would recommend this book to anyone.

I don't normally not finish a book, but I could not finish this one. My issue with this book is that it starts out well when discussing the Clotilda and how these Africans end up in America. The writing style is ok, but does not grab the reader. At times the story moves along a little to fast and jumps around. The author also gives great detail on some events or people and then moves on to another subject and does not give the details needed. When you get to the half way point of the book you are not sure if the book is about individuals, families, Africatown, politics, or Jim Crow Laws.

Africatown was a lot of threads of US history rolled into one. I saw some other reviews saying that it felt like two distinct books, and while I agree with that in some ways, I greatly enjoyed the information that was being shared.

The first half details the last international slave transfer in the United States, via the ship Clotilda. The Clotilda brought slaves from Dahomey to Mobile, Alabama in 1859. From there, the author traces the journey of the enslaved from then until their freedom in 1865 and the development of a village called Africatown, where the formerly enslaved and their descendants settled.

From there, Tabor demonstrates how the community of Africatown was systematically neglected by local, state and national government, leading to the rise of heavy industry and negative environmental impacts. This in turn led to a rise in civil rights and environmental activism, including the fight to designate Africatown a national historic landmark.

Overall, I think this book brings many important themes into specific focus and helps put a lens on the ramifications of government neglect and how they radiate through generations.

In 1858 despite it being illegal to transport native Africans to America for slavery, to no ones surprise at all a businessman in Alabama did just that. In the belly of the ship called the catilda men who were taken by violence and sold for slavery were wasting away in the belly of the ship. They were broken out of a dead sleep some would never see their loved ones again but their despair wasn’t over it was just beginning. This shit would never make it to the Alabama shore they were aiming for but unfortunately “the cargo“ what an even almost 2 centuries later their descendants are still fighting for fairness. From the beginning it has never been easy and unfortunately there is still bows who do not care about making it even worse. This whole book read like great fiction with eyewitness details it is packed full of historical facts and events that only make the interest level of this book top knoch. From there wish to be free all the way to their west to live in a healthy environment Africatown has never been on any list of priorities except if it made money for the already rich and affluent but thankfully there’s a grassroots group and others who wheeled enough power to make it uncomfortable but those who are important are starting to hear about this historical place created by a People that never wanted to be here to begin with. What makes this book so different from other books about in slayed African is this one even hand and I witness account of been being taken from their village it has the captains narrative the implement of the Jim Crow laws in Hollywood affected those in Africa town the fight against having pipeline to run through their elementary school and throughout all these subjects they have other related historical facts that it’s to the books goodness. This is a well done historical stories that should’ve been told before 2023 but you live and you learn and I’m so glad I got to read this. It makes me sad reading about what a peaceful respectable people do this world that were ripped out of their homes and had relatives murdered right in front of them and to think that that was just the beginning. I don’t know how anyone could read a story like this and not feel that they belong to a species of animal never identified rats. This is heartbreaking but I must read book! A total five star rating! I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes but I am blind and dictate my review.

Excellently researched and well thought out--- this is a great look at some little-known parts of American history, environmental justice, and the overall tangled relationships of our country. The history was occasoinally a little longwinded, but I thought the sources were utilized well and always given good context. An important and interesting read for all history fans.

Wow, I am not even sure where to start. Africatown is a well written, disturbing book that reminds us that we still have a long way to go. The story of the shipmates and how they were captured in Africa and brought to Alabama despite the illegality of importing slaves is a sad chapter in our history. I was reminded again and again that slavery, discrimination and bigotry did not end with the Civil War.

While the story of their journey on the Clotilda was heartbreaking, it was the resilience of the shipmates that is the real story. Despite the continued marginalization of the residence of Plateau and Magazine, Alabama the story has remained to be told. I think what struck me the most was the reluctance of the Reagan Administration (Particularly Secretary of the Interior James Watt) to recognize the importance of Africatown, and how this was not a unique story.

in 1972, the National Park Service gave a private group, the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation, the funding to carry out a sweeping survey of these landmarks. An early ABC report made a stinging critique of the park system’s criteria for designating historic sites. “It is organized to cover American history from a white American’s perspective,” the group wrote in 1973. “There appears to be a marked reluctance on the part of NPS to openly deal with some of the less appealing aspects of American history, especially slavery … Although the past cannot be changed, it can be honestly faced, and the future can be made differently.”

It is not an easy, or light read, but I highly recommend Nick Taylor’s book Africatown, and as a result I am sure I will do more reading on the last slave ship that came to the USA.

My only complaint about this edition of the book (uncorrected digital copy) is the failure to link footnotes and the occasional need for editing.

Africatown is about a community that was established in Mobile, Alabama, after the emancipation of the last Africans brought to the US on the ship, the Clotilda. Their journey from Africa to the US and subsequent life here is fascinating and not as well-known as it should be. I enjoyed the first half of the book, which was more about the lives of the people in the community. The second half of the book dealt more with the conditions and environmental racism that still exists there today. While interesting, it was a bit drier. But nevertheless, I wholeheartedly recommend this book that recounts an important part of American history. Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

Africatown by Nick Tabor is such an interesting read. I earmarked lots of places to go back and dive further into. The sources in the back are excellent resources for future reference. We need more books like this to keep important stories and histories in our minds.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced digital copy.

A very thorough examination not only of the Clotilda, the famous ship illegally carrying over 100 enslaved people of African descent, including Cudjo Kossola Lewis, "Africatown" covers the aspects of founding of the town itself by Lewis and other survivors who could trace their origins to the Clotilda, but goes into so much more.

Fans and researchers who want to know more about Zora Neale Hurston's involvement with interviewing Lewis will benefit from the amazingly detailed sections discussing this aspect of the chronicle of Africatown, how Hurston's white financial benefactor Charlotte Osgood Mason tried to work to make sure no one "scooped" "HER" story as she put it, thinking she had ownership over Lewis (as well as Hurston, and Langston Hughes, two of the most prominent writers of the Harlem Renaissance that she sponsored). She failed to see the horrible lack of understanding that she mustn't think of human beings in terms of ownership, although it is worth noting that Mason became furious at the publishers like Harper & Row who said that the book version of Hurston's interviews with Lewis, "Barracoon" (which would be posthumously published decades later), was "too full of dialect." What they weren't saying was that they didn't think white readers would "get" the book, and that they didn't think Holly Housewife would pick up a copy at the local bookstore.

In any case, Lewis's story became national news in the 1930s, but it's also important to note, as the author Tabor points out here, that his life was presented in Jim Crow journalism terms very disparagingly, as if he were an object to mock rather than a human being who had endured and prevailed in the face of unimaginable hardships, including the deaths of several of his children, and his beloved wife, and a train accident that traumatized him.

While the pacing slows down in the second half of the book, Tabor highlights the lives of the forgotten and lesser-known survivors and their descendents in this town, which once prospered, but like so many others in the South, gave way to neglect, and residents had no choice but to leave in droves. Some readers may find the sections about activism against pipelines similarly slow down the pacing of the book and get away from the main crux of Mobile, Alabama. Nonetheless, Tabor's book provides vital and crucial insights into the construction of the Clotilda, the white men behind it and how they proceeded to something illegal and got away with it and tried to hide the evidence, as well as so many more subchronicles involving a hugely significant part of American history that needs to be far more widely known and taught.

Wow, this book was fantastic. This book grabs you and keeps you reading all the way to the end. There is lots of information contained within these pages but it is written in such a way as to keep you interested and reading. This book is a must read for anyone who loves to read about history and find out new things. This is a must read for any history fan.

3.5 Stars, rounded up.

Expected publication: February 21st 2023

Many thanks to both St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an early copy of Africatown.

The community of Africatown was founded in 1865 by the emancipated slaves who had been smuggled there on the Clotilda. The slavers burned the ship in Mobile Bay, where it was lost to history in the muddy waters of the bay until May 22, 2019, when the Alabama Historical Commission and partners announced that the wreck had been found in the bay.

Many of the community residents are the shipmates’ direct descendants, and they believe the pollution from the heavy industry surrounding their homes has caused a cancer epidemic among residents. I hope this book will open the right eyes. Enough is enough.,

I will admit to finding the second half of Africatown less interesting than the first. At times I felt as though I were reading a dry textbook.

This book focuses on largely local elements of national history. It takes as its focus the last pre-war voyage of a slave ship from Africa via the Caribbean. It goes on to trace how these individuals and their descendants developed and lived in a sectional of Mobile, Alabama known as Africatown.

Parts of the book - especially those set in Africa itself - read like a novel. And while the author details an extensive source list, which takes up about 1/4 of the book, the reader has to wonder how much of the quoted dialogue is based on the author’s imagination and how much on lore passed down verbally over 150 years.

These are problems any historian faces when writing of poorer groups of people, especially those with a verbal vice written narrative tradition. The author addresses these problems in the body of the book as well as the end sources, but it’s worth considering this when reading.

Given all this - and perhaps because of this - much of the book evinces a real sense of place that puts the reader among African slavers, trans-Atlantic sailors and riverboat men.

This narrative history is a worthwhile and entertaining slice of American history.