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Durkin has reconstructed the story of Redoshi's life through a number of archival sources, starting with his kidnapping in what is now Benin at the age of 12 and his pbading in Mobile, Alabama aboard the "Clotilda", the last slave ship to arrive in the United States. in 1860, carrying 116 people.
During his research, Durkin discovered that Redoshi was forced to marry aboard the ship.
She and her husband, known as William or Billy, were bought by Washington Smith, founder of the Bank of Selma and owner of the Bogue Chitto plantation in Alabama, where she was enslaved and renamed Sally Smith, working in the house and in the fields. for almost five years.
After her emancipation in 1865, she continued to live in the Smith plantation and came into contact with young civil rights activists such as Amelia Boynton Robinson.
Boynton Robinson, along with other activists and historians, have documented his life. Durkin is inspired by their work.
Redoshi died in Alabama in 1937, two years after Oluale Kossola, or Cudjo Lewis, who would have been the last survivor of the American slave trade.
While other people born into slavery would have lived after 1937, Redoshi is the last surviving slave abducted from Africa.
"This discovery is so important that it gives a meaningful voice to a woman survivor of the transatlantic slave trade for the first time," Durkin told CNN via email.
Several details give an idea of what Redoshi was, including efforts to maintain his West African beliefs and other forms of resistance, such as owning his own land in the United States, according to the statement. Press.
And the research could help the descendants of slaves to identify their origins.
"The descendants of the Clotilda survivors are the only descendants of the survivors of slavery in the United States who can trace their ancestors to a specific region of West Africa," Durkin said.
"I really hope that this will allow more descendants of transatlantic survivors to find their ancestors."
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