British Library | Survivors: The Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade @britishlibrary | Uploaded July 2024 | Updated October 2024, 20 hours ago.
This event took place on 14 April 2024. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
The Clotilda docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860 – more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history. In this special event, Dr Hannah Durkin draws on her extensive archival, historical and sociological research to tell the stories of the Clotilda’s 110 captives. From their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship’s 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile – an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance – to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee’s Bend.
Chaired by historian, genealogist and author, Dr Wanda Wyporska.
Dr Hannah Durkin is a historian specialising in transatlantic slavery and African diasporic art and culture. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Nottingham and a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from Leeds Trinity University. She has taught at Nottingham and Newcastle universities, and recently served as a Guest Researcher at Linnaeus University in Sweden. She is an advisor to the History Museum of Mobile, which is working to memorialise the Clotilda survivors, and was the keynote speaker at Africatown’s 2021 Spirit of Our Ancestors Festival founded by the Clotilda Descendants Association. She is the recipient of more than a dozen academic prizes, including a prestigious Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.
Dr Wanda Wyporska is the erstwhile Chief Executive of the Society of Genealogists, the national charity that houses the largest archive and library on family history. She previously led The Equality Trust, is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of York, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. An historian of the Early Modern period, her first book, Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland 1500-1800, was shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and she regularly contributes to a range of historical events, such as HistFest, podcasts and interviews. She was a Starun Senior Scholar at Hertford College, Oxford, has lectured at a number of universities and is a regular keynote speaker.
This event took place on 14 April 2024. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
The Clotilda docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860 – more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history. In this special event, Dr Hannah Durkin draws on her extensive archival, historical and sociological research to tell the stories of the Clotilda’s 110 captives. From their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship’s 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile – an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance – to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee’s Bend.
Chaired by historian, genealogist and author, Dr Wanda Wyporska.
Dr Hannah Durkin is a historian specialising in transatlantic slavery and African diasporic art and culture. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Nottingham and a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from Leeds Trinity University. She has taught at Nottingham and Newcastle universities, and recently served as a Guest Researcher at Linnaeus University in Sweden. She is an advisor to the History Museum of Mobile, which is working to memorialise the Clotilda survivors, and was the keynote speaker at Africatown’s 2021 Spirit of Our Ancestors Festival founded by the Clotilda Descendants Association. She is the recipient of more than a dozen academic prizes, including a prestigious Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.
Dr Wanda Wyporska is the erstwhile Chief Executive of the Society of Genealogists, the national charity that houses the largest archive and library on family history. She previously led The Equality Trust, is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of York, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. An historian of the Early Modern period, her first book, Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland 1500-1800, was shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and she regularly contributes to a range of historical events, such as HistFest, podcasts and interviews. She was a Starun Senior Scholar at Hertford College, Oxford, has lectured at a number of universities and is a regular keynote speaker.
