Africatown, Nick Tabor
Africatown, Nick Tabor
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Africatown
America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created

Author: Nick Tabor

Narrator: Chris Butler

Unabridged: 13 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/21/2023

Synopsis

An epic story, Africatown charts the fraught history of America from those who were brought here as slaves but nevertheless established a home for themselves and their descendants, a community which often thrived despite persistent racism and environmental pollution.In 1860, a ship called the Clotilda was smuggled through the Alabama Gulf Coast, carrying the last group of enslaved people ever brought to the US from West Africa. Five years later, the shipmates were emancipated, but they had no way of getting back home. Instead they created their own community outside the city of Mobile, where they spoke Yoruba and appointed their own leaders, a story chronicled in Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon.That community, Africatown, has endured to the present day, and many of the community residents are the shipmates’ direct descendants. After many decades of neglect and a Jim Crow legal system that targeted the area for industrialization, the community is struggling to survive. Many community members believe the pollution from the heavy industry surrounding their homes has caused a cancer epidemic among residents, and companies are eyeing even more land for development.At the same time, after the discovery of the remains of the Clotilda in the riverbed nearby, a renewed effort is underway to create a living memorial to the community and the lives of the slaves who founded it.

About Nick Tabor

Nick Tabor is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in New York magazine, the New Republic, the Washington Post, Oxford American, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Courtney on February 03, 2023

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 allo......more

Goodreads review by Claire on October 30, 2023

A very interesting narrative that centres on the last slave ship to arrive in America, but which tells the story of much more than that. Africatown is a story about a place, and it’s people. A sweeping narrative that considers the history of slavery, the development and subjugation of a community, e......more

Goodreads review by Jack on March 15, 2023

Even if my best friend didn’t write this book I’d give it five stars. Essential reporting about environmental racism, and something that you can point to next time some asshole conservative tries to tell you systemic racism is fake.......more

Goodreads review by Maxine on April 11, 2023

Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created by Nick Tabor is a well documented, well-researched book giving the history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship and the human cargo of 110 men, women, and children it brought from Africa to America in 1860, long after the trans-Atla......more

Goodreads review by Brendan on February 05, 2023

Africatown is the rare example of an epic book which gets everything right. Nick Tabor has written a book which follows the last group of slaves every brought into the United States in 1860. Tabor follows the lives of these people and then looks at the community they created up until the present day......more

Quotes

“This reader’s voyage begins on the slave ship Clotilda in 1860, sails through slavery and Jim Crow, and docks in today’s port of environmental racism. A powerful tale of oppression, suffering, resistance, and survival, Africatown is a profoundly American saga.” Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History

“Packed with unforgettable characters, this deeply researched book tells a complicated story with stunning clarity from the Civil War–era South through today. Alternately enraging and inspiring, Africatown connects the history of slavery, industrial pollution, labor exploitation, movements for environmental and political justice, and—always—the power of hope for the future.” Jane Dailey, author of White Fright: The Sexual Panic at the Heart of America’s Racist History

“There’s a lot of talk these days about the need to trace present-day problems of poverty and racial inequality to historical discrimination and disinvestment. In Africatown, Nick Tabor has drawn this connection in the most compelling way possible, showing how a single community created as a direct legacy of the slave trade in the final throes of its rapacity continued to suffer—and strive to overcome—other ordeals throughout the generations, right now to the present-day ills of environmental racism and economic displacement. This is a true American story, deeply reported and lucidly told.” Alec MacGillis, author of Fulfillment: America in the Shadow of Amazon

“The story of the Clotilda and Africatown is a story about people and the worst and best of human behavior. Nick Tabor powerfully shares that story of resilience, perseverance, and persistence as history continues to emerge from family stories, archives, and the muddy waters of the Mobile River.” James P. Delgado, author, archaeologist, and lead scientist in the archaeological identification and investigations of the Clotilda

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