It is 1859. Eighteen-year-old Kossola, which means "I do not lose my fruits anymore." is the eldest child of his father's second wife Iya. Kossola, a young Yoruba man living in the village of Bante, is enjoying market day. It is a day when people come from all over to buy goats, cows, yams fufu, and much more. Bante is enclosed on all sides by tall walls.
Kossola has been training for four years to be a soldier, preparing to be initiated into oro, the secret society of men and highest levels of the Yoruba religion. He is marked as a soldier, to track, hunt and protect, by having his cheek marked with a knife, and his front teeth chipped so that he has a circle shaped opening. As a soldier, Kossola is to guard one of the town's eight gates. One night he hears rustling and sounds the alert for the people to hide in the woods. He later learns that an attack was thwarted.
Afterwards, Kossola learns that he will begin the oro initiation ceremony. He and the other initiates and men spend nine days outside Bante. He hasn't yet completed his initiation when his nineteenth birthday comes but Kossola is already thinking of taking a wife. The girl he's interested in is Aderonke.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, Captain Timothy Meaher, almost fifty years old, hosts a dinner aboard the Roger B. Tancey. He and his guests discuss "Congress's refusal to reopen the international slave trade" which they believe is absolutely necessary to make their businesses profitable. Attending the dinner are Mr. Deacon who is a New York City businessman, Mr. Ayers also a Northeasterner who makes pills and a Louisiana farmer named Mr. Matthews. It is Matthews who suggests that slaves can be brought in illegally and he's willing to bet one hundred dollars on this. But Captain Timothy is willing to wager a thousand dollars that he can smuggle slaves into Mobile, Alabama without the authorities discovering them.
So Captain Timothy, unable to take the time to make the journey himself, hires Captain William Foster, a younger man and a Canadian. They secure a ship, the Clotilda. Foster suggests they sail to Ouidah in Dahomey, along West Africa's Slave Coast to collect their "cargo".
J.B who grew up an orphan and has worked on ships since the age of ten, learns that Captain Foster is hiring for the Clotilda and is hired on. He feels good that it will be a regular shipping job because he doesn't want to work on any slave ship. Meaher meanwhile decides he will hire a tugboat skipper, Hollingsworth to bring in his cargo so that he can hide them in the swamps before selling them off.
The Clotilda is almost five years old, made of oak and pine planks held together with iron. It knows that Foster and Meaher are lying when they tell people the ship will be carrying lumber. With all the supplies that have been loaded, the Clotilda knows there is enough for a shipload of Africans and is horrified to be part of the illegal slave trade. The eleven-man crew boards along with Foster who sneaks aboard gold and has also falsified papers indicating they are travelling to St. Thomas with lumber.
The journey is filled with troubles from the very beginning. The gold Foster has hidden in the ship causes the the compass to malfunction sending the Clotilda off course. For forty days and nights the ship endures repeated storms including a cyclone and is pursued by two Portuguese man-of-war. One of the crew, J.B. discovers he has signed onto a "slaver" and is furious. He and the other crew rebel and force Foster to offer to pay them double to continue the voyage. In Portugal, Foster bribes the American consul and the Portuguese officials to look the other way.
In Africa, King Glele sends out his warriors to hunt down prisoners to sell and sacrifice to honor their ancestors including his recently deceased father. They attack Bante, capturing Kossola and many others and murder their king. On the march to Dahomey, Kossola meets Kupollee another Yoruba man who is roped to him. They are taken to Glele's palace surrounded by an iron fence adorned with human skulls. Gumpa, a nephew of Glele doesn't approve of what he's doing, so Glele has him imprisoned along with the Bante captives and eventually sent to the barracoon.
All of the captives are put through a sorting process, some are left behind but most are sent to Ouidah where they will be forced onto the Clotilda which lies in wait for them. Those to be sent to America include Kossola, Abile, Kehounco, and Kupollee. At Ouidah, the captives are poked and prodded in every way by Captain Foster and those chosen as slaves are placed in canoes to be taken aboard the Clotilda. They do not realize they are not merely prisoners but now slaves who will never see their homeland nor their families again in this life.
Discussion
African Town is a beautifully crafted novel-in-verse about a real historical event, the smuggling of one hundred ten Africans from Dahomey, now known as Benin in 1860 to Alabama. The novel covers the events beginning in Mobile, Alabama and Bante, African in 1859 up until the death of Captain William Foster in 1901.
Although the novel is a work of fiction, the events portrayed in the novel really happened: Timothy Meaher made a bet he could circumvent the law forbidding bringing in slaves from Africa. To that end he hired William Foster to sail to Ouidah in the Clotilda under false pretenses. The Africans who ended up on the Clotilda were captured by fellow Africans and sold to Foster for transport across the Atlantic. They were then sold to various buyers in Alabama after being hidden in the swamps surrounding Mobile.
After the Civil War, those slaves now free, eventually came to create African Town, building their own homes, a school and businesses, demonstrating their remarkable resiliency, determination, frugality and business acumen. Amazingly, to this day the Meahers continue to be a very prominent family in Mobile, Alabama and although Timothy Meaher's great-grandson Robert Meaher admits slavery is wrong he is appallingly quick to deflect the blame to others as well.
To tell this story, Latham and Waters use fourteen different characters including the ship, Clotilda. The major characters include Kossola, Kupollee, Abile, Gumpa, Kehounco, Glele, Timothy Meaher, and William Foster. The authors used the survivors' original African names as this was what was what they requested be done for an earlier publication. They drew on a wealth of information from journals written by both Meaher and Foster and by interviews given by the survivors including Kossola.
African Town utilizes various poetry forms and styles for each of the fourteen characters, and thankfully the authors describe each type in a section at the back titled Poetry Forms/Styles. The poetry of Latham and Waters is evocative, capturing a many of the emotions one would expect from men, women and children who have been ripped away from their homes, their lives and their families.
Many of the poems capture the sadness, fear, loneliness and confusion of the captured African men and women. One of the characters, James Dennison who was already a slave, watches as the new Africans are brought to the plantation. "When I go to sleep each night, I can hear their cries pierce the lilac skies with loneliness and pain that breaks the moon open."
But the poetry also captures the comfort, support and love they show one another on the journey across the ocean under unbearable conditions and throughout their lives. Helping one another was key to surviving the trip across the Atlantic in a cramped, filthy hold of the ship. Abile and Kehounco join together to support one another, "We may be only two, but dignity is easier to muster as a team. My heart settles when she grips my hand." Abile states in the poem, Sisters By Choice.
Their resilience and determination to survive, their refusal to allow the
white men to take away their humanity is especially seen in the characters of
Kossola and Gumpa. In a poem, Brotherhood, Kossola states,
"...But de affection
I feel for Kupolle, Ausy,
and de other men is much
de same - a sense of brotherhood,
like we know de same secrets.
De sailors may have stripped
and chained us, left us in de hold
for weeks, but we're still breathing.
We're all warriors and survivors."
Even after the Civil War when they are free, the survivors refuse to be broken. Initially they plan to return to Bante in Africa and work hard, are frugal and save. When that plan never materializes, the group moves on to other options. They decide to "Make our own Africa". Gumpa suggests that "If we cannot escape this exile, then we are owed land to build our own community, to take our African customs and apply them in this country among ourselves." When Timothy Meaher refuses to give them land, the strategically work to buy land from him and other white people, once again working to help themselves and their children. Soon their dream of their "own Africa" comes to fruition in African Town.
African Town is an engaging novel, that focuses not so much on the horrors of what actually happened in the last act of enslaving a group of people from Africa to America, but more on the incredible resiliency, courage and determination of the people who endured such evil. It is a remarkable testament to the character and humanity of the Clotilda survivors.
The following articles may be of interest:
American's last slave ship stole them from home.
Clotilda: Last American slave ship is discovered in Alabama
Last know slave ship is remarkably well preserved, researchers say.
Book Details:
African Town by Irene Latham & Charles Waters
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons Ltd.
438 pp.
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