Descendant (2022)

This is about the ship Clotilda and the living descendants of those who were aboard it; this is an oral history lesson with some facts to back it up. The ship, built and financed by wealthy Mobile, Alabama resident Timothy Meacher around 1856, was used to bring the last slaves acquired in the international slave trade to America in 1860. Since this type of slave trade had been deemed illegal in America by then, and was punishable by death, Meacher burned and sank The Clotilda afterwards to cover up his crime. The descendants of the 110 victims of Meacher’s treachery settled in Africatown, a section of land now incorporated into Mobile, Alabama. The denizens there, past and present, were privy to the first-person narrative of Cudjoe Lewis, once believed to be the only living survivor of the Clotilda. Lewis told his story not only to his kin, but also to author Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote it down for her 1931 book, Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo. The text of this documentary is about the search for The Clotilda, which up until 2019 has never been found. The descendants talk about what they know about their past, what has been passed on through generations, but also about what they think about the present and the future in terms of responsibility and reparations. That for me was the most fascinating part of the story; there is no single belief or stance, and the responses are thoughtful and balanced. Black history is American history, but so often it has been corrupted, miscategorized, bowdlerized, or flat-out ignored in schoolbooks and classes. Erasure cannot be done to oral traditions, so long as there is someone alive to tell the tale and pass it on.