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Cudjoe Lewis (Oluale Kossola): The Last Survivor of the Clotilda and Co-Founder of Africatown (PHOTOS)

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Cudjoe Lewis—born Oluale Kossola around 1841 in Bantè, in the kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin)—stands as a powerful witness to two intertwined histories: the rich traditions of the Yoruba people of West Africa and the enduring scars of the transatlantic slave trade. Remembered as the last known survivor of the Clotilda, the final recorded slave ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States, Lewis’s life illuminates both the brutality of enslavement and the resilience of African culture in the Americas.

Early Life and Capture

Kossola was born into the Yoruba ethnic group, whose communities at the time were part of the sophisticated Oyo cultural sphere. His youth was shaped by the rhythms of Yoruba village life until circa 1860, when soldiers of the kingdom of Dahomey—under King Ghezo—conducted one of their frequent slave-raiding expeditions. During this raid Kossola and hundreds of others were seized and marched to the coastal slave port of Ouidah, a key hub in the transatlantic slave trade.

Although the United States had banned the international slave trade in 1808, American slave traders still financed clandestine voyages. In Ouidah, Kossola was sold to American traffickers and forced aboard the schooner Clotilda, along with roughly 110 other captives.

The Illegal Voyage of the Clotilda

The Clotilda’s voyage was organized in secret by Timothy Meaher, a wealthy shipper from Mobile, Alabama, who aimed to defy federal law and profit from human trafficking. In mid-1860 the Clotilda crossed the Atlantic and slipped into Mobile Bay. To destroy evidence of their crime, the crew burned and sank the ship in the Mobile–Tensaw Delta—its remains would not be positively identified until 2019, when maritime archaeologists confirmed the wreck.

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Enslavement and Emancipation

On arrival, Kossola was renamed Cudjoe Lewis, a common practice meant to erase African identity. He was enslaved on Alabama plantations until the end of the American Civil War in 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment formally ended slavery. Freedom, however, brought daunting challenges: Lewis and his fellow Clotilda survivors had to build livelihoods in a society still marked by racism and economic exclusion.

Founding of Africatown

Determined to preserve their heritage, about thirty Clotilda survivors—including Lewis—pooled their resources and purchased land in 1870 from the Meaher family itself, the very family that had financed their illegal capture. They established a settlement they called Africatown (also known as Africa Town) on the outskirts of Mobile.

The founders organized their community using social and political traditions from their West African homelands, maintained Yoruba and other African languages for decades, and celebrated their ancestral customs. Lewis emerged as a respected elder and community leader, helping to keep the group’s cultural memory alive.

Later Life and Zora Neale Hurston’s Interviews

In the early twentieth century, Lewis shared his memories with journalists, historians, and notably with Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance writer and anthropologist. Hurston interviewed him in the late 1920s, capturing his vivid recollections of capture, the Middle Passage, and the founding of Africatown. Publishers of the time rejected the manuscript for its unflinching portrayal of slavery; it remained unpublished until 2018, when it appeared as Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”.
Lewis died on July 26, 1935, in Africatown, by then recognized as the last known survivor of the transatlantic slave trade.

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Legacy and Historical Significance

Cudjoe Lewis’s life underscores the persistence of the illegal slave trade more than fifty years after it was outlawed in the United States. His testimony preserves an authentic African perspective on capture, enslavement, and cultural survival. Africatown—today a U.S. National Register of Historic Places site—remains a living symbol of resilience, where descendants and preservationists continue to honor the memory of Lewis and his fellow founders.

The 2019 confirmation of the Clotilda wreck renewed international attention to Africatown’s history and to the broader story of the Atlantic slave trade’s last chapter. Lewis’s journey—from Yoruba village child to elder of an African American community—remains a powerful narrative of endurance, identity, and the unbreakable ties between Africa and its diaspora.

Sources
Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.” Amistad, 2018.

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Women Who Love and Listen to Their Pastors More Than Their Husbands Should Be the Pastor’s Second Wife

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August 16, 2026

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This statement may sound funny, provocative, or even offensive, but it raises an important question about priorities in marriage and religion.

A pastor is a spiritual leader, but he is not supposed to replace a woman’s husband. If a married woman consistently values her pastor’s opinions above her husband’s, obeys her pastor while dismissing her husband, or shows greater loyalty and admiration toward her pastor than toward her spouse, then something may be seriously wrong with the balance in that marriage.

Marriage requires communication, mutual respect, trust, and understanding. A pastor can provide spiritual guidance, but that guidance should not become a reason for a husband and wife to lose respect for each other.

At the same time, husbands should not expect their wives to obey them blindly. Both husband and wife should seek God’s wisdom, communicate openly, and make decisions with love and respect.

So perhaps the real question is not whether such a woman should become the pastor’s “second wife,” but why has the pastor become more important in her marriage than her own husband?

Put God first. Respect your spouse. And never allow a spiritual leader to become a substitute for your marriage partner.

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Why is it only in Africa that we hear so much about “generational curses”?

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20 hours ago

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August 16, 2026

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This is a question worth asking—not to insult African traditions or dismiss anyone’s beliefs, but to encourage honest reflection.

Across Africa, it is common to hear people explain repeated family problems as a “generational curse.” When poverty, broken relationships, addiction, failure, sickness, family conflict or misfortune appears to repeat from one generation to another, some people immediately conclude that an ancestor, spiritual force or past wrongdoing is responsible.

But is every repeated family problem truly a curse?

If a child grows up in poverty, has limited access to quality education, receives little financial support and then struggles as an adult, is that necessarily a spiritual curse—or could it be the result of circumstances that have been passed from one generation to another?

If children grow up watching violence, substance abuse, unhealthy relationships or constant conflict, they may unknowingly repeat those patterns. That does not necessarily mean they are cursed. Sometimes behaviour is inherited through environment, not through supernatural forces.

And Africa is certainly not the only place where people believe in supernatural explanations for suffering or misfortune. Different societies around the world have their own concepts of inherited wrongdoing, family misfortune, ancestral consequences, fate and spiritual punishment.

So perhaps the more important question is not:

“Who cursed my family?”

But:

“What pattern has been passed down to me, and what can I do to stop passing it to the next generation?”

We should be careful not to use the idea of a curse to discourage people from taking action. A family facing poverty may need education, opportunity and financial planning. A family experiencing repeated conflict may need healthier communication. A person struggling with addiction may need professional support and a strong recovery environment. Communities facing injustice may need better institutions, accountability and opportunity.

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Faith and spirituality are deeply meaningful to many people, and everyone has the right to hold their beliefs. But faith should not prevent us from examining the practical causes of our problems.

We cannot change the past, but we can change what we pass forward.

Instead of teaching our children that they are victims of an unavoidable family curse, let us also teach them knowledge, discipline, emotional strength, financial responsibility, education, healthy relationships and the courage to break destructive patterns.

Maybe the greatest “curse” is not something mysterious placed upon a family.

Maybe sometimes it is simply a problem that nobody stopped long enough to understand and change.

And the greatest inheritance we can give the next generation is not fear of a curse—but the knowledge and courage to build a better future.

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You are very proud to speak big English, but yet you cannot speak your own language?

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August 16, 2026

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There is nothing wrong with speaking English fluently. In fact, being able to communicate confidently in different languages is a valuable skill. But we should ask ourselves a deeper question: while learning to speak the language of another culture, are we slowly losing the language that connects us to our own roots?

Your mother tongue is more than just words. It carries the stories of your ancestors, the wisdom of your grandparents, the jokes that only your people understand, the traditional greetings, the names, the songs, the history and the identity of your community.

Imagine being able to speak perfect English, but struggling to have a simple conversation with your own grandmother because you do not understand the language she grew up speaking. Imagine your children knowing foreign languages but being unable to understand the language of their own heritage.

That should make us pause.

Speaking English does not make you more intelligent, and speaking your indigenous language does not make you less educated. One is a communication skill; the other can be a connection to your heritage. We should not have to choose between being educated and preserving our identity.

Learn English. Speak it confidently. Learn French, Dutch, Spanish or any other language that opens doors for you.

But don’t let the pursuit of foreign languages close the door to your own.

Teach your children your language. Speak it at home. Ask your parents and grandparents to teach you the words you never learned. If you have forgotten it, it is never too late to start again.

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Because when a language disappears from a family, something precious disappears with it.

Be proud of your education. Be proud of your ability to speak English. But also be proud of where you come from.

Your language is not something to be ashamed of. It is a part of your story. Preserve it before the next generation only knows it as something their ancestors once spoke.

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