A review by corvingreene
The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines

adventurous dark emotional informative mysterious sad medium-paced

5.0

This is an incredible book that covers a wide range of history, from life for Black people before they were captured and enslaved in the US, in Benin, to the experience on the Clotilda, the last slave ship that illegally transported enslaved people after the importation of enslaved people to the US was outlawed. The book covers the lives and experience of these people brought from Africa, and who survived into living memory, so they could be interviewed and their lives recorded. The author covers the founding of Africatown, AL, where most of them settled after the end of slavery, and how that town became a toxic dump site that continues to harm the health and safety of its residents. The author also is one of the people who searched for and eventually discovered the ruins of the Clotilda ship, which its owners tried to destroy in order to hide the evidence of their illegal activities. For a relatively short book, I'm stunned by the scope, and it was an excellent introduction to the topic.