Descendant: Documentary Film Screening We will host a screening of the Netflix documentary film Descendant on Friday, February 28 @ 6:00 - 8:00 pm in the reception hall. There will be a Q&A to follow with DWP diver, Kamau Sadiki, who is also featured in the film. This event will be free and open to the public.
Description: Descendant is a 2022 American historical documentary film directed by Margaret Brown, chronicling the story behind Africatown in Alabama, and the descendants of the last known enslaved Africans brought to the United States aboard the Clotilda. The film premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where it was picked up for wider distribution by Higher Ground Productions and Netflix. It received a theatrical release on October 21, 2022 and is available to stream on Netflix.
In 1808, the United States passed an act of Congress that abolished the international slave trade, making it illegal to bring slaves across the Atlantic ocean and back to America. However, in 1860, the owner of the Clotilda, Timothy Meaher, and his crew started their voyage to Africa. Once arriving, they had purchased and taken well over one hundred slaves. On July 9, 1860, 110 African men, women, and children, survived that voyage and were dropped off at the Mobile Bay in Mobile, Alabama. William Foster, the captain, burned the ship and tried to destroy any traces of evidence pertaining to this illegal expedition. Centuries later, the descendants of the slaves on the Clotilda, reside in this town of Mobile, Alabama, now known as Africatown. The descendants have worked to fight for justice and find the Clotilda in the river. The wreckage of the Clotilda was found in 2019 in the Mobile River of Alabama, and this film explores the community of Africatown and the descendants of some of the last known enslaved Africans that were brought to the United States aboard her 40 years after slave trading had already been deemed a capital offense.