Noted Scholar and Author to Speak at UA About Her Book on the Last Slave Ship to America

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Sylviane Diouf, curator for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, will give two lectures on her award-winning research and writing at The University of Alabama on Nov. 12 and 13.

On Tuesday, Nov.13 at 4 p.m. in 205 Gorgas Library, Diouf will discuss her most recent book, “Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America.” This event, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a reception and book signing.

“Dreams of Africa in Alabama” is a detailed account of the lives of the young people from Benin and Nigeria who were on the last documented slave ship to the United States.

The 110 children and adolescents who had been forced to board the Clotilda arrived in Mobile in 1860. Freed in 1865, they tried unsuccessfully to go back home and finally founded their own settlement, African Town, where their descendants still live today. The last survivor of the original group died in 1935.

“In a tale worthy of a novelist, Sylviane Diouf provides a well-researched, nicely written and moving account of the last slave ship to America, whose 110 captives arrived in Mobile in 1860 and, after the war, created their dream of Africa in Alabama,” said Dr. Howard Jones, a UA history professor and author of “Mutiny on the Amistad.”

“Dreams of Africa in Alabama” was named the co-winner of the 2007 Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association.

In her lecture on Monday, Nov. 12 at 11 a.m. in 205 Gorgas Library, Diouf will discuss her book “Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas,” the first book to retrace the 500-year-old story of West-African Muslim communities in the New World. It was named Outstanding Academic Book and Honorable Mention for the Outstanding Books Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights.

Diouf holds a doctorate from the University of Paris and has had careers in journalism, diplomacy and in academia, teaching at both the University of Libreville and New York University, and has appeared in documentaries on PBS and ABC and the PBS series “History Detectives.”

Diouf’s visit to Tuscaloosa is co-sponsored by UA Libraries, New College, The Realizing the Dream Committee, the departments of American studies, modern languages and classics, women’s studies, the African-American studies program and the Summersell Center for the Study of the South

Note: To download a flier, click here.

Web site: www.lib.ua.edu/events/