Clotilda (slave ship)

Uncommon card · No. 187932

The schooner Clotilda (often misspelled Clotilde) was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring enslaved individuals from West and Central Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859 or on July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children. The ship was a two-masted schooner, 86 feet (26 m) long with a beam of 23 ft (7.0 m). U.S. involvement in the Atlantic slave trade had been banned by Congress through the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves enacted on March 2, 1807 (effective January 1, 1808), but the practice continued illegally. In the case of the Clotilda, the voyage's sponsors were based in the South and planned to buy Africans in Whydah, Dahomey. After the voyage, the ship was burned and scuttled in Mobile Bay in an attempt to destroy the evidence. After the Civil War, Oluale Kossola, also known as Cudjo Lewis, and 31 other formerly enslaved people founded Africatown on the north side of Mobile, Alabama. They were joined by other continental Africans...

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