Black divers were central to the reclamation of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to transport kidnapped Africans to the United States.

In our coastal area, the unceded territory of the Amah Mutsun people and a place where Black servicemen and their families resettled after fighting in U.S. wars in the Pacific, Santa Cruz Black holds space to engage with Kamau Sadiki, a master diver with the Slave Wrecks Project, and Joycelyn Davis, a direct descendant through Charlie Lewis of the 110 Africans who were violently uprooted from their homes and communities.

Through a multigenerational conversation facilitated by Santa Cruz Black with Black studies students at UC Santa Cruz, we will consider how the reclamation of the wreck was an act of resistance to the world-shattering racialized and colonial violence of chattel slavery, an act of remembrance prompting us to consider waterways as a Black geography, and an act of community resilience and rebuilding.

How does the resurfacing of the wreck challenge generations of secrecy and silence?

How does it upend the presumption of closure and healing?

How has it impacted–across generations–the people of Africatown (aka Magazine/Plateau) in Mobile, Alabama?

This event is co-sponsored by the Slave Voyages project, the Humanities Division, John R.Lewis/College 9, and The Humanities Institute.