Cudjoe Lewis – The Last Child of Africa Forced into Slavery in America

In 1860, aboard the illegal slave ship Clotilde, a young African man sat shackled, his terrified eyes staring out at the endless ocean. His name was Kazoola – later called Cudjoe Lewis in America. He did not know then that he would become the last person born in Africa to be brought into slavery in the United States.

Kazoola was born in Togo, near Porto-Novo (present-day Benin). His youth was filled with tribal traditions, songs, dances, and the language of his homeland. But it all ended in a single, fateful moment. Captured and forced to march hundreds of miles, he was taken to the slave port of Ouidah – one of the largest hubs of the transatlantic trade. There, along with over a hundred others, he was crammed into the dark belly of the Clotilde and carried across the Atlantic to Mobile, Alabama.

The cruel irony: the United States had already outlawed the African slave trade for more than 50 years. Yet greed triumphed. Timothy Meaher – the ship’s owner – treated these human lives as nothing more than proof that he could defy the law.

Upon arrival, Kazoola and 31 others were handed to Meaher. They were not legally enslaved, yet not free – trapped in a twilight state where they were controlled but abandoned to survive on their own. They built makeshift shelters, hunted for food, and clung to one another for survival.

In 1865, with the Civil War’s end and slavery abolished, Kazoola and his people were finally declared free. But freedom came with heartbreak: their pleas to be sent back to Africa were ignored.

So, from nothing, they created Africatown – a community of displaced Africans just outside Mobile. There, they preserved their language, customs, and memories of home. And Cudjoe Lewis, with his resilience and memory, became their guiding spirit.

He met with leaders like Booker T. Washington and recounted his life to Zora Neale Hurston – the celebrated Black writer. Hurston even captured him in a short film, the only known moving images of an African survivor of the transatlantic slave trade.

Cudjoe Lewis lived until 1935, reaching the age of 94. He died in Africatown – the home he and his people built from the ashes of slavery. In his final testimony, he carried a lingering sorrow:

“We wanted to go home, but no one would take us. So we made a home here instead.”

Cudjoe’s story is not just a personal tragedy – it is a mirror of America’s history: where chains left scars, but where resilience and memory turned suffering into legacy.