There were many horrors born out of the enslavement of Black bodies. Terror, sexual abuse, mental anguish, despair, and the separation of families are only the tip of the iceberg. Erasure— of history and personhood — are still things that echo through the Black community. However, as filmmaker Margaret Brown’s striking documentary Descendant suggests, our histories and the truth can never stay buried for long.
Descendant begins the search for a slave ship that should have never existed. Just one year before the American Civil War began and 52 years after the International slave trade was outlawed in the United States, a ship named Clotilda arrived on the shores of Alabama. A white plantation owner named Timothy Meaher charted the illegal expedition in a bet that he could evade the law. Clotilda carried 110 African men, women, and children to the Alabama shores before Meaher set the vessel ablaze —determined to erase what he’d done.
Continue reading at Shadow and Act.