Chains linking together slavery and racial discrimination, stimulated the oppression of Africans. Slavery and labor go hand in hand, there would have been “no enslavement without economic need” (Jordan 50). There is two sides to slavery: one group is displaced and exploited so that the other may prosper. Sylviane Diouf’s book Dreams of Africa in Alabama, reiterate how enslaved Africans were forcibly carried across the Atlantic to the United States after the international slave trade was abolished. Dreams of Africa in Alabama recounts the story of the last shipload of captive Africans brought to the United States and their struggles for survival and the preservation of their culture throughout.
Dreams of Africa in Alabama takes the reader on a journey, more than fifty years after the United States abolished the international slave trade. Men, women, and children from West Africa were captured and secretly brought ashore to Mobile, Alabama. Timothy Meaher, was the mastermind that sent the slave ship, the Clotilda, to Africa, on a bet that he could "bring a
…show more content…
Many of those who were ripped from their homelands, dreamt of returning home to their families. After emancipation, the young Africans regrouped and found their own settlement once their dreams of returning home could not become a reality. In “Africa Town” the Clotilda Africans made a living through agriculture and trade techniques that they brought from Africa. This clearly shows, that Africans held on to their traditions unfailingly. “Africa Town,” was founded upon indigenous African cultures and a form centralized state systems. The notion of centralized state system came out of black Africa. The towns’ centralized state system consisted of a chief, two appointed judges, and various laws. Within the town, they kept their culture intact. “African did not let go of their beliefs when they arrived in the Americas” (Diouf