Los descendientes del Clotilda

This documentary is top notch. As anyone who has ever looked into their family history can tell you, the single most important resource genealogists have available to them is descendants. Many of us remember family stories passed to us from our parents & grandparents and many of those stories were passed to them by their parents & grandparents. In many cases the only historical records available are those stories passed generation to generation. The Christian Bible is a prime example of the importance of those stores passed thru the generations. The first Bible began taking shape about 600 years after the death of Christ so one can reasonably assess that the entire Christian Bible is based on stories passed down from generation to generation to generation. Is it possible that one, or more, of those story tellers might have exaggerated a bit? Probably - Just as the story of Lincoln scribbling the Gettysburg Address on the back of envelope isn't true. It is even possible the person documenting the story exaggerated for some reason - maybe even to make their story more appealing or even to satisfy a financial sponsor as with Washington's cherry tree story. In any case, the slaves brought over on the Clotilda deserve to be remembered and as with the Bible, each of us is free to determine what we believe.

If a person knew very little about slavery and the slave trade, this documentary would be a great shock and revelation. Since my earliest student days, however, the slave trade between Africa and the "Americas" stood high profile with me. It still does.

By focusing on the voyage of the "Clotilda", it being the last or one of the last slavers, and the descendance of its human cargo, it manages to cover the utterly dismal topic sufficiently. Grinning white people in suits referring to the reconstructive drawing of the "Clotilda" as "Wonderful" have no place in this story. This story belongs to African Americans, and how they were so late in history, abducted to the Americas by greedy white men.

These same men, and they were men, who now hold all the money and land from this outrage now are riding a gravy train of financial advantage. Overall, the abomination against humanity that was the entirety of the Africa-Americas slave business will remain a bleeding sore on our society until reparations are made. Now that would be a wonderful picture.

(Irving Warner)

I found this to be a fascinating documentary, that held my attention throughout.

That said, it left me with some unanswered questions, in part because of its format, which focused on interviews with people who lived in Africatown, near where the Clotilda, evidently the last slave ship to arrive in the United States, landed.

I can completely understand why the director and producer would want to give these people a chance to express their views and feelings. They had been ignored for so long.

And I know that documentaries can only be so long before viewers start to turn out and off.

But I would have liked more background about a variety of issues. Do we know anything about the Clotilda's route to the States? Do we know where in Africa it left from? Have any of the descendants taken DNA tests that would help with this?

What was life like for the descendants of the original slaves between the time of Emancipation and today?

And on and on.

None of that is a criticism of the movie, which I enjoyed very much. But because the story it told is so interesting, it left me wanting to know so much more.

The polluting factories and the highway that destroyed the Downtown area of Africatown are just other facts that help validate what the descendants are saying. Historians use oral histories as part of their research - this is a common practice. A lot of people don't want you to see this documentary. They are afraid of how it will make them look. They are afraid that it will explain someone's situation. This is one of the reasons I watched the documentary. It explains so much about the Bible Belt south. If you care about American history at all, you will find this documentary rewarding. Watch it and decide for yourself.

Interviewing a bunch of relatives of slaves who just want reparation's for something their great great great grandparents went through. People they never met nor spoke to. Sad that the memory of the people who went through slavery has been reduced to this. The slaves remained strong through humility. They had Christ in their lives and God delivered a people who put their faith in Him. To try to capitalize on a situation like this by making a documentary based on the telephone game mentality of people who honestly are so far removed from the situation any testimony given will be self centric in nature is appalling. Should you ask Caucasian Americans with Italian decent about the roman empire? I think not.