Ben Raines > Quotes

“The Africans fervently embraced Christianity, but they did not want to attend one of the established churches in the area. Cudjo said they didn’t want to “mixee wid de other folks what laught at us.” Too many of the members of those churches mocked the Africans for the way they spoke and the habits that identified them as foreigners. Instead, the Africans decided to build themselves a church where they could worship without scorn. The first version of the church was a brush arbor in a clearing next to Cudjo’s house. In time, they built a classic wooden church with a steeple and bell and called it the Old Landmark Baptist Church. Today, the sturdy brick edifice of the Union Baptist Church sits on the same spot. About a hundred yards away stands a brick chimney that used to be attached to Gumpa’s house. It is the last structure built by the Africans that is still standing”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“In 1927, the school started by the Africans, then known as the “Plateau Normal and Industrial Institute for the Education of the Head, Heart and Hands of the Colored Youth,” received a grant from the Rosenwald Fund to build a new, much larger school, with ten classrooms and living quarters for ten teachers. The fund was the brainchild of Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, the CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Co. The pair met in Chicago in 1911, after Rosenwald attended a speech by Washington. Rosenwald, whose fortune would have ranked him as a billionaire by today’s standards, was looking for a philanthropic cause to answer what he believed were “the special duties that capitalists and men of wealth owed to society.” Rosenwald provided an endowment for Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and embraced Washington’s dream of funding schools across the South to teach what the educator described as “industrial education.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“This group split up the seven-acre parcel, which was about a half mile away from the property purchased from Meaher. It has come to be known as “Lewis Quarters,” and the eight neat and tidy homes in the neighborhood are still inhabited today by descendants of the Africans.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Compounding matters was Mobile’s four-hundred-year history as a seaport. More than 280 shipwrecks have been located in Mobile Bay and the swamp immediately to the north. Most remain unidentified. Some of them are ships that sank as early as the 1600s. Others are ships or barges that were intentionally sunk after they’d become too worn-out to sail. Wooden ships like the Clotilda had a fairly short working life of about twenty-five years. Built before the revolution in construction techniques brought on by the mass production of screws, nuts, and bolts in the 1870s and ’80s, the wooden sailing vessels of the Clotilda era were held together with nothing but giant nails. Decades at sea, with the constant stress of rising and falling waves, gradually loosened them, making the ships leakier and leakier, until eventually they were no longer seaworthy. As a result, several bayous around Mobile Bay are well-known “ship graveyards” where old vessels were beached or sunk to get them out of the way of the shipping channels and rivers.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“After 1965, people in Africatown could shop anywhere they wanted. Cars had become common in the community, and the larger markets and department stores of Mobile’s downtown shopping district were just a three-minute ride away. Likewise, desegregation meant African-Americans were no longer confined to living near the few schools available to the Black population. People started moving out, to other parts of Mobile, or to several small African-American towns that surround Africatown, places where you couldn’t smell the overpowering stench from the paper mills. Contributing to the problem was a sudden dearth of housing when the Meaher clan decided to get out of the house rental business in 1967, after building more than five hundred rental houses in Africatown since the 1880s. Residents say the family simply moved people out and bulldozed the houses, destroying much of the area’s longtime housing stock.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Even American hero Jim Bowie participated in illegal slaving,”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“You know that saying, the truth will set you free? Well, the ship is the truth. All the Black folks in America got here chained up on ships just like that.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Meanwhile, the death of Timothy Meaher in 1892 reminded the nation of the story of the Clotilda and kindled new interest into what had become of her passengers. Obituaries in the Mobile Daily Advertiser and Register, the New York Times, and papers all over the nation, described Meaher as “the venerable steamboat man” and “swashbuckling.” But most of the ink in every obituary was spent telling the story of the Clotilda and the creation of Africatown. Many of the obituaries included descriptions of the settlement, such as this from the hometown Daily Advertiser and Register: “They mix very little with other negroes and preserve many of their native customs, using their native language, speaking English with difficulty and being ruled by a queen of their own choosing. They enjoy a high reputation for honesty and industry.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“The money allowed the school to significantly expand and saw it renamed Mobile County Training School.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“and created the first and only community in the nation started by enslaved Africans. They suffered through racial violence”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“I am a prince of Dahomey. It was my father’s ancestors who did this,” Posset said, explaining that he, like the mayor of Abomey, had royal lineage. “But my mother was Yoruba. Her ancestors came here to this country [America] forcibly, they didn’t choose. And it was my father’s family who sold my mother’s family. This is why I wept. I was insulting those who sold them back home. No money, no articles, no stuff can buy a life, but we sold our people. Brothers sold their brothers and sisters. Fathers sold kids and wife. I will never blame those who came here. I will always beg them for forgiveness.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“creation of Africatown, Alabama, the only community in the nation started by people who were born in Africa.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“When people talk about slavery, they think they are talking about Africa,” said Nathalie Blanc Chekete, with Benin’s National Agency for the Promotion of Heritage and the Development of Tourism. “But slavery was something that happened once they reached America or Brazil. What happened in Africa was deportation, where Africans took other Africans away from their lands and families and sent them away forever.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“The Gullah descendants—who were geographically isolated on barrier islands and remained socially isolated as those islands became playgrounds for wealthy beachgoers—have managed to turn their cultural provenance into a tourist draw, with museums, a heritage trail, and a healthy schedule of public events. Many of the people living in or tied to Africatown want to create something similar.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Saving America’s Amazon,”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Cudjo picked up the last name Lewis at this time. It was not his first choice. At first, he tried to approximate Western-style names by adding his father’s name—O-lo-loo-ay—as his last name. “But it too long for de people to call it. It too crooked lak Kossula. So dey call me Cudjo Lewis,” he told Hurston.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“By the early 1900s, Africatown was the fourth largest community in the nation governed by African-Americans, attracting the attention of Booker T. Washington, Zora Neale Hurston, and others. By the 1950s, there were movie theaters, grocery stores, barbershops, restaurants, and twelve thousand residents.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Before the ship was even discovered, Africatown’s activist groups applied for and won a $3.8 million grant from Alabama’s share of the BP oil spill settlement money, to build a new welcome center on the hill above the cemetery, to replace the destroyed mobile home. Then, in the wake of the ship’s discovery, another federal grant was given to create a “heritage center” in the community, which will be the initial facility designed to hold any relics found in the hold of the ship. But neither the welcome center nor the heritage center will be anything close to the scale and power of the new Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. To”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Two of Africatown’s sons, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee, were stars on the World Series–winning New York Mets of 1969 known as the “Miracle Mets.” Cleon made the game-winning catch that clinched the championship for New York. All of Africatown crowded around radios during the game and erupted in cheers when they heard their hometown hero had won the game.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“The French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, and English all built forts in Ouidah specifically to enable the slave trade.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Sports, particularly baseball, took on an outsize importance in Africatown. In addition to the teams for the school, each neighborhood and sometimes each street fielded its own baseball team, complete with uniforms. By the 1950s, kids coming out of Africatown’s baseball leagues were earning college scholarships, and often a chance to try out for the major leagues. In the 1960s, there were six men on Major League Baseball teams who grew up playing against each other on the Mobile County Technical School’s baseball diamond, a stunning feat for the tiny community. Two of Africatown’s sons, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee, were stars on the World Series–winning New York Mets of 1969 known as the “Miracle Mets.” Cleon made the game-winning catch that clinched the championship for New York. All of Africatown crowded around radios during the game and erupted in cheers when they heard their hometown hero had won the game.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Historians estimate the Kingdom of Dahomey may have been responsible for capturing and deporting about 30 percent of all the Africans sold into bondage worldwide between 1600 and the 1880s.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Confederate Veteran magazine”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Instead of coal, Meaher burned huge slabs of bacon as fuel. Bacon burns hotter than coal, leading to a significant increase in speed.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves, the law was signed in 1807 by slave-owning president Thomas Jefferson.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“One hundred percent of the nearly 1 million pounds of chloroform released in Mobile County in 1988 was released in Africatown. Chloroform is classified as a probable carcinogen by the EPA. Chronic long-term exposure, such as one would experience living in the shadow of two paper mills, can cause liver disease and affect the central nervous system. One hundred percent of the chlorine dioxide in the county was released in Africatown. Nearly all of the 1.8 million pounds of hydrochloric acid released in the county in 1988 was released in Africatown. Nearly all of the acetone, methanol, xylene, chlorine, methyl ethyl ketone, and toluene released in the county were released in Africatown. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, fertility problems, kidney and liver damage, nose and throat irritation, asthma, and loss of hearing and color vision.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“Oh Lor’! Lor’! De wife she de eyes to de man’s soul. How kin I see now, when I ain’ gottee de eyes no mo’?”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“The most insidious of the destructive forces behind Africatown’s demise involves the paper mills, which were at the heart of a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by residents. After seventy years as the main employers of Africatown’s residents, both mills shut down in 2000. Suddenly, nearly two thousand jobs disappeared, along with the perpetual and noxious stench associated with paper making. But the job losses were just a scratch on the surface compared to the real, almost invisible damage the mills had inflicted. To fully understand the story, we must step back in time to the 1980s, to a time when environmental laws in Alabama were essentially meaningless. Today, Alabama ranks last in the nation for what it spends to protect the environment, and is widely regarded by industry trade groups as the most permissive state in the country when it comes to setting or enforcing pollution limits. Back in the eighties and nineties, things were much worse. James Warr, who was the head of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management from its inception in the 1980s until the early 2000s, was opposed to vigorous application of environmental regulations for businesses. He was an odd fit for the head of an environmental agency tasked with regulating polluters, but I believe that is precisely why he was chosen—to ensure that the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act didn’t slow industrial production in Alabama. I was an environment reporter for the Mobile newspaper for eighteen years, beginning in 2000, and had numerous interactions with Warr and his agency. During an interview in 2003, Warr told me that the federal Superfund law was illegal and he had no intention of enforcing it or adding new sites in Alabama to the list.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“The next purchase was made by a group that had been enslaved on Thomas Buford’s plantation, about a ten-minute walk through the woods from the property bought from Meaher. Included among the group with Charlie Lewis, his wife, and several other Clotilda couples was an American-born couple who had also been enslaved on the Buford plantation. Horace and Matilda Ely were the first non-Africans invited to live in African Town. They would not be the last.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

“wealthy Georgian named Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, who bought the Wanderer, a luxury yacht, in New York and outfitted her for slaving. Around the time Meaher made his bet, Lamar was being lionized as a hero in newspapers across the nation as tales of the Africans he smuggled into the country spread. Relying on family money to make his start, Lamar was involved in horse racing, gold mining, road building, and the shipping of cotton. However, it appears he was not particularly good at any of those endeavors, and was repeatedly bailed out of financial disasters by his father, Gazaway. A family history going back three hundred years contains a small mention of Charles, describing him as “a dangerous man, and with all his apparent recklessness and lawlessness, a cautious man, too.” Perhaps not too cautious, as he was known to often resort to violence. While serving as an alderman on the Savannah City Council in 1853, he was arrested for “disorderly conduct and fighting in the streets.” In 1858, he shot out a friend’s eye while attempting to defend his uncle in a fight. Ultimately, he was the last person killed in the Civil War, in a small battle fought in Columbus, Georgia, seven days after the surrender at Appomattox.”
― Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning