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Kind of Blue

(8,709 posts)
Wed Apr 3, 2019, 09:34 PM Apr 2019

She Survived a Slave Ship, the Civil War and the Depression. Her Name Was Redoshi.

Source: The New York Times

It has long been believed that a man named Cudjo Lewis was the last living survivor of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the United States. Now a researcher at Newcastle University in Britain says she has discovered testimony from someone who may have lived even longer — a woman named Redoshi.

The new findings, published last week in the journal Slavery & Abolition, are likely to be subject to scholarly debate, because there are few records documenting the lives of the last Africans to be captured and brought to the United States on slave ships.

Regardless of Redoshi’s precise historical status, the researcher, Hannah Durkin, has pieced together accounts from different sources and census records to carve out the remarkable life of a woman who survived the treacherous Middle Passage voyage at age 12, was sold as a child bride, and lived through the Civil War and the Great Depression. According to Dr. Durkin, Redoshi died in 1937; Lewis died in 1935.

“It was thought that this woman was lost to history,” Dr. Durkin, a lecturer at Newcastle University, said in an interview.

But Redoshi was not lost. She is believed to have been taken from a West African village before being brought to the United States in 1860 on the Clotilda, the last recorded slave ship to arrive in the country after more than 240 years of slavery.

The rest of her life provides a stark example of the physical and psychological trauma left on those who survived the trans-Atlantic slave trade, scars that continue to inflame tensions in the United States today.

Dr. Durkin wove together bits and pieces of Redoshi’s life that were found in Hurston’s unpublished writings and an interview she gave to The Montgomery Advertiser as well as in “Bridge Across Jordan,” a memoir by the civil rights leader Amelia Boynton Robinson. Redoshi was also filmed for an instructional film released in 1938 by the Department of Agriculture called “The Negro Farmer: Extension Work for Better Farming and Better Living,” possibly making her the only female Clotilda survivor who appeared on film.

The film, which was meant to showcase issues facing formerly enslaved people as they tried to become farmers, shows Redoshi as an old woman on the porch of her small home, made out of wooden planks on a plantation in Alabama. As a narrator speaks, she can be seen talking to someone as she sits in a chair, wrapped by a quilt. Her white hair looks fuzzy, marked by stray braids poking out of it, and her skin is dark and thick but still vibrant. She has a gaptoothed smile, and cheekbones rising up to her eyes.


Here she is and she is of my clan and here I am weeping to see myself in at least in another 25 years.

Thank you, Mother, for surviving.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6022124700001/?playlist_id=2114913880001#sp=show-clips



Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/transatlantic-slave-trade-last-survivor.html

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She Survived a Slave Ship, the Civil War and the Depression. Her Name Was Redoshi. (Original Post) Kind of Blue Apr 2019 OP
My daughter, as part of "Black History Month" had to write an essay. akraven Apr 2019 #1
Wow! Wow! Wow! Kind of Blue Apr 2019 #2
Well, it was in Birmingham and the Museum had just opened - it's been years, akraven Apr 2019 #3
And it's been years. Kind of Blue Apr 2019 #4
A favorite quote, along with akraven Apr 2019 #5
Yeah, it feels good. Kind of Blue Apr 2019 #6
This forum is the best! spicysista Apr 2019 #7
Aww, never to late! I'm just getting started Kind of Blue Apr 2019 #8
Thanks for the video and thanks for this awesome post! spicysista Apr 2019 #9
Aww, shucks Kind of Blue Apr 2019 #10

akraven

(1,975 posts)
1. My daughter, as part of "Black History Month" had to write an essay.
Thu Apr 4, 2019, 12:26 PM
Apr 2019

We DUG into library records, etc. DEEP. My precious didn't want "ordinary" (Tubman, King, etc.) and found this lady in an old old record in Birmingham.

My sweetness won first prize and was the only white kid invited to read her essay at the BHM dinner.

This woman was so amazing - more is available at the Birmingham (AL) Public Library!!

Kind of Blue

(8,709 posts)
2. Wow! Wow! Wow!
Thu Apr 4, 2019, 02:56 PM
Apr 2019

She found out at library, of all places, before the whole world knew. I am so proud of your daughter, too! What an honor. I wish that I could read your baby's essay.

Please give her a big hug for me because it's research like hers that respect truth will help set us free from madness

akraven

(1,975 posts)
3. Well, it was in Birmingham and the Museum had just opened - it's been years,
Thu Apr 4, 2019, 03:35 PM
Apr 2019

but she's a hustler!

Kind of Blue

(8,709 posts)
4. And it's been years.
Thu Apr 4, 2019, 04:01 PM
Apr 2019

Truly impressive, akraven, when I thought it was just recently. I wish her the best in whatever she pursues. Paraphrasing the late Al Jarreau, "Whatever she is after she will get it. I'm thinking it's no wonder why."

Kind of Blue

(8,709 posts)
8. Aww, never to late! I'm just getting started
Wed Apr 17, 2019, 11:29 AM
Apr 2019

learning more about Ms. Redoshi. Here's a bit more than the article's nice treatment slant.

I can't get her off of my mind because we're from the same region and, I believe, clan.

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