I came across this book shortly after seeing a documentary of the ship that was believed to have brought the last slaves to American and who would eventually settled into and area that became known as Africatown and thought it was meant that I needed to read this book. I still believe I need to read it but for now I had to DNF. :-(

For what I did manage to read, I found it was a very detailed look at some of better known inhabitants of Africatown and I am sure the same approach was applied to the rest of the book.
I think the book would be good for anyone interested in or researching this period of Black history.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for an ARC.

DNF - Not sure why I wasn't able to get very far in this book...maybe it wasn't the right time. Regardless, it wasn't a great fit for me.

I came across this book after reading the 1619 Project and was intrigued in the story of the people of Aftricatown. The first third or so lays a more personal basis for the people in the book while the second and third are bit more fact/process based. I absolutely loved that Tabor talked about town politics, the impact of environmental racism, and the portrayal of these people in the news.

A well researched, compelling, heartbreaking must read for anyone looking to educate themselves on the lasting impact of the slave trade, jim crow era, and racism in all forms.

Africatown explores the town the enslaved people from the last slave ship to sail to America made their home. The Clotilda was last documented slave ship to make the trek from Africa to America. While these formally enslaved people were now “free” the conditions they endured in small town Alabama were environmental racsism. This book touches on the extreme environmental conditions the people for Africatown endured and in some respects still endure today. In addition this book explores the last slave journey and the life of Cudjoe Lewis the subject of Zora Neale Hurston’s acclaimed novel Barracoon.
This book is why Black History Matters. I learned so much about this small town outside of Mobile Alabama that I never knew about or was taught about in school. This book is pivotal in showing how enslaved people while free were no truly free due to the environmental,institutional, and structural racism the people of Africatown endured and to an extent still endure today.

Thank you St Martins Press and Netgalley for this ARC. #SMPInfluencers #Africatown #nicktabor

This is a very well researched novel about the Clotida, the last slave ship. It is very well written and I learned a lot. Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an ARC.

I must say there is a lot of history that I have not been aware of. I am working to change that. I found this book fascinating. The resilience of the people, the culture, etc. It needed to be read in small chunks because it was just so dense with topics I did not know about. It also brought up some interesting concepts. Although literature is working to change this, how much have non-white/male people contributed to history and they are lost? If those who destroyed the statues wanted a different story told, what statues should exist? How much of history has been lost to time because no one wrote it down or wasn't able to or someone changed it? I feel like this is the start of a very long adventure. If this wasn't offered as a read now book from NetGalley, I may have missed it. I am glad that wasn't the case.

Africatown felt like two different books.

The first half reads like the best narrative nonfiction. We follow a small group of Africans who were sold into slavery and brought to Alabama on the last slave ship, called the Clotilda. We learn about the slaves’ lives, the family who owned them, and what happened when the Civil War came to an end. This part of the story felt personal, and the heartbreak was almost tangible.

The second half of the book reads like dry text. The focus shifts to town politics, industry and pollution, and the loss of neighborhood and community. Unfortunately, this felt far less personal and tended to ramble with a lot of facts, more like reading a Wikipedia entry than an engaging narrative. While the lingering health issues for people living in the area are quite sad, I just didn’t find this part all that engaging in the way it was presented.

I've not been writing professional reviews for a while now, but I strongly recommend this important book. Some of the information I already knew, but most I did not.. I learned a lot of disappointing things about my home state of Alabama. What we don't learn in school is appalling. Even college-level history courses didn't reveal all. On the other hand, all was not known at the time I was doing undergrad work -- all is still not known.

I was fascinated by this story because I live near Africatown and I wanted to read all of the facts. Very well written.
Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Nick Tabor's Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created is a fascinating read. Five stars.

Africatown by Nick Tabor is more than just your classic history book. It is a book about people’s lives that have been changed through the course of time; through slavery, emancipation, racism, environmental racism, poverty and gentrification all while these people remain members of a community desired to be remembered. It is an incredibly eye-opening book about the Clotilda, parts of Mobile, Alabama, and the people who have come to reside there, those whose lives continue to be affected daily.

Yes, I am a Canadian, so why am I learning history about the United States? Because I am a strong believer in if we don't learn from our past, history will repeat itself. Equality is a goal of mine for the world, so why would I not read a non-fiction book to further back up some of what I read about through fictional characters?

There is a lot of history in Tabor's book, starting back in 1859 to present, but it is portrayed in such a way that it is not just providing facts to the reader. With all that history, there is equally as much humanity and as much heart; it is more about a community and its people than simply stating facts in text. It's amazing how much history is in this area of the south with the Civil War, slavery and the cotton industry - I can't imagine the hours of digging and questioning that went into researching and creating this book. It just blows my mind.

I am pleased that this book is additionally available in an audiobook format for people who need that option. It is out there. It's available. And it is beyond well done.

This book is for those who seek to find solutions to racial injustice. It is for a wider understanding of the South represented in books like To Kill A Mockingbird and the slavery represented more recently in Hester. For people who believe in pollution and cancer clusters, like in the case of Hinkley, California, as shown in the movie Erin Brockovich. This is a book I look forward to rereading in the future.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the complimentary copy to read and review.

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-Atlantic slave trade had been banned and just before the start of the Civil War. It covers a lot of history from the capture and kidnapping of Kussola later known as Cudjo Lewis, through the years of slavery, emancipation and the decision of several of the ship mates to purchase land and create their own community first called African Town later Africatown, right up to the present and the descendants’ efforts to make Africatown a national historical site as well as their fight against the environmental racism that eventually surrounded the town.

Tabor uses both primary and secondary sources to tell the story including Zora Neale Hurston’s book Barracoon and is very careful to identify what is actually known and what is speculation. With this amount of history, there seemed the possibility, like too many books of history, to become overly pedantic or devolve into a dry information dump but Tabor manages to avoid either, making this a very interesting, highly readable and, given the political atmosphere today, a very important book.

Thanks to Netgalley and St Martin’s Presses for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

This book is an absolute must-read. It traces the impact of slavery and creates an incredible through line about impacts today in this town near Mobile, Alabama. There has been a lot in the news in the past few years about finding the last slave ship called Clotilda that sank off the coast of Alabama. What is critically important about his finding is that this ship and the Meader family illegally captured slaves to bring over after slavery was outlawed. Through this book, we hear the perspectives and history of people captured in Africa and brings us through their stories and their descendants'' stories for example from Zora Neale Huston's book "Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" (which publishers did not want because of her use of dialect and unfortunately may have been somewhat plagiarized from another author's writing). This book takes us through the aftermath of slavery from Jim Crow Laws, tenant farmers, poverty and industrial pollution. The latter chapters focus on environmental justice and activism to address the unfair exposure of Africatown to harms from hazardous pollution and that exposure to environmental harms is inequitably distributed in black and brown communities overall. This book is meticulously researched and goes more in depth than the documentary "Descendent" and also other works on the Clotilda. This book is a critically important read to understand how systemic racism still exists in our society.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars, rounded up to acknowledge the huge learning experience! This is a good, interesting, complete coverage of the settlement/community known as Africatown that is near Mobile AL & founded by those that were brought to that area in 1860 to be sold as slaves. It begins in that area of AL, talking about those that already lived there & the economy/atmosphere of the area, then the story of the Clotilda, & the book covers to present day. The 1st part of the book is mostly about the shipmates (those captured Africans) & the later part of the book is about that area to the present day & the community's attempt at historical preservation. I did learn a lot in reading this, and it was interesting throughout. It's easy to recommend this book to anyone interested in American history.
I received an e-ARC of the book from the publisher St. Martin's Press via NetGalley in return for reading it & offering my own fair/honest review.

A well researched book about the last slave ship, Clotilda, the slaves that were on it and the home they eventually built in a place called Africatown. This book really gave me a good understanding of the Blacks plight from Africa, slavery, freedom, reconstruction and right through 2022. While I don't think what happened to the people of Africatown was unique within the Unites States, it told a sorrowful way Blacks were treated through this example.
I recommend this book.

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. There is so much that can go wrong when you mix history, politics, and generational conflict. Often, I find these books become too unwieldy. The politics will be too one-sided, the history will be superficial, and the dizzying amount of names make it impossible for anyone to stand out. Thank you, Nick Tabor, for making me look dumb because this book is fantastic in every aspect.

The history portion of the book dealing with the Clotilda, the Civil War, and the Jim Crow era are expertly done. The reader learns about the origins of the slave trade in West Africa, the emancipation of the slaves, and how they tried to build new lives post-Civil War. Tabor creates a narrative which is short by comparison to other books on slavery but is just as effective, if not more so. If the story of Cudjo Lewis doesn't effect you then it's time for therapy.

Somehow, this book then slips into current state politics and does not lose steam. I generally hate reading about contemporary politics because you end up hearing a very one sided argument. While Tabor clearly has a point of view, he never fails to point out the valid concerns of the counter argument. This is sometimes just a single line in a much larger section, but it goes a long way in the reader trusting that the author did his homework and is being realistic and fair.

Quite simply, this is a fantastic book that everyone should read.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and St. Martin's Press.)

This is the perfect book to read during Black History Month. To be honest, I had only a very vague awareness of the ship Clotilda. After reading Africatown and learning its history I have added several more books to my TBR list.
America had ended slavery but that didn't stop a businessman from Mobile, Alabama from kidnapping 110 Africans and smuggling them into Alabama. Their story comes alive with the writing skills of Nick Tabor. Their survival, their drive to build a new life for themselves and their descendants is both heartbreaking and inspiring. Taking the reader from 1860 through Jim Crow and into the present this is a must read and I have added it to my short list of my best reads for 2023.
My thanks to the publisher St. Martin's and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Well written and researched book about a story that has been overlooked on a national scale for a longtime. The story of Africatown and those who established this community is one of extreme bravery and survival. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a comprehensive telling of the last slave ship to come to America and the amazing men and women who endured hell to be able to survive in a land far from home.

5 years ago the bestie read "Barracoon" by Zora Neale Hurston and that was my introduction to the Clotilda and the story of the last slave ship. Fast forward to 2022 and the Ben Raines book "The Last Slave Ship" was released and my interest was intrigued even more. Then, this book popped up on NetGalley and I took it as a sign and jumped down the rabbit-hole [I have Barracoon to read next month and The Last Slave Ship, the month after]. As I absolutely love history and learning, I will never ever be sorry that I went down that rabbit-hole and started with this one. :-)

This story just about knocked me out and I am 100% sure that I will need to reread this at some point; there is just SO. MUCH. INFORMATION. From the moment the Clotilda sets sail to modern day, this is just the craziest story ever that reads like fiction, but is very, very, true. I was hooked from page one and the story just got better and more crazy and SAD SAD SAD as the book went on. I am so glad I read this and look forward to the other books about this time, the amazing people that came unwillingly and then survived and the ship that carried them and actually am looking forward to revisiting this story again as I am sure there are things that I missed and I am 100% sure there is much more for this girl to learn.

Thank you to NetGalley, Nick Tabor, and St. Martin's Press for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This excellent, compulsively readable work of non-fiction tells the story of the community in Alabama that grew up following the voyage of the Clothilde, which is believed to be the last ship to transport enslaved people from Africa to the United States. Africatown makes a convincing case for how systemic racism, beginning during the 19th century when the community of Plateau (as the community was originally called) was founded in the wake of the Civil War, continues to the present through the economic and environmental challenges seen in the Africatown neighborhood today. Through deep research into primary and secondary sources, some of which have only recently been uncovered (like the remains of the ship itself), the book raises important questions about how we tell stories about our past, who gets to decide what’s preserved, and why.

Likes: The book does an wonderful job of situating the personal histories of many of the people within the broader contexts of local Mobile history, Alabama history, Southern history, and American history. The personalities of those involved in the story over the decades, including Cudjo, a freedman born in Africa, the celebrated author Zora Neale Hurston and her eccentric patron, Henry Williams, the resident of Plateau most determined to have its history recognized as “Africatown, USA,” and properly preserved, and many more, jump off the page. Where possible, the book prioritizes primary sources and the voices of community members over secondary sources, and the author carefully unpacks possible bias on the part of earlier historians, reporters, and writers from outside the community.

Dislikes: really none.

FYI: descriptions of the Middle Passage, kidnapping, slavery, violence, lynching, racial terrorism, racism.