Raines begins in 1860, 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed. Anyone who imagines that attempting to circumvent democracy is a new thing has forgotten the civil war. This story from long ago puts into context what the new spate of lawlessness in the US is all about. “Of all our studies,” said Malcolm X, “history is best qualified to reward our research.” In our uncertain times, Ben Raines’s perceptive new book, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning, is a welcome and affecting history lesson. What, one wonders, did their audience know of Dahomey’s more sinister legacy? The musical play featured the cake walk, which became a dance sensation, and a madcap plot set in Boston, Florida and the African nation now famed for royal bronzes plundered by imperialists. To acclaim, they reprised their Broadway hit, In Dahomey.
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