Name: Fulfilling Survivors' Dream (Full Episode) | Clotilda: The Return Home | National Geographic
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T17:10:59.000Z
Duration: 44 min 30 s
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Altavies Gary, Cassandra and Delisha are descendants trying to take their ancestors home to West Africa for the first time in over 100 years.

This is an opportunity to reckon, to heal.

Is the king saying, my ancestor was not sold into slavery.

And that just feels really powerful to me.

Diving with a purpose is a non profit group.

It's made up of predominantly black scuba divers who mainly have a passion for scuba diving.

But the part of their work that I most connect to is this work around diving for slave shipwrecks.

There were approximately 36,000 voyages that brought 12.5 million Africans to the Americas.

Most often we think of the people on these slave ships as cargo as, like, faceless statistics.

They were mothers, daughters, husbands, sons.

They were princes, they were kings, they were farmers, dreamers, scientists, teachers.

The Clotilda is actually the only one of those ships to have been found intact.

This work to recover that history is hard.

But as I met the descendants of the ancestors on the Clotilda and I saw the strength that they got from connecting to that past, it's like, well, if they can do it, maybe I can.

We are at the monument of our ancestor, Kosolo Lole, whose slave name was Kujo Lewis.

We want to take some soil in order to represent him and take him home.

For Kosola was near the kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa, within what is now known as Benin.

In 1860, he was captured by members of the Dahomey tribe, sold into slavery, forced onto the last known slave ship to America, the Clotilda.

Khosla said that when he went onto the ship, it was a man standing there and he said, take your clothes off.

And that right there, taking his country cloth and just took something out of him.

Kosala and 109 captive Africans were confined aboard the Clotilda, all chosen and among the last to enter the world of chattel slavery in America.

Under this brutal system, humans were reduced to mere property, treated like cattle, and

perpetually owned under laws designed to enforce their degradation.

those aboard the Clotilda endured and persevered through this cruel system for almost five years in Mobile, Alabama, until they were freed in 1865.

Their plan was to work and to save their money and return home.

But when they go to pay for the ticket, the price kept rising.

Unable to return home, the survivors at the Clotilda brought home here.

They purchased land from their former enslaver and called it Africatown.

They built a community complete with houses, school, and

a church, establishing the first town in the United States to be founded, controlled, and

continuously occupied by African Americans.

Here they could celebrate their culture and preserve their memories of home for generations.

Cudjoe, the Clotilda's last male survivor, married, raised children and passed down his life story with a hand drawn map showing the path home.

His last words was that he wanted to go back to Africa.

I'm looking for a feeling when we hit Africa for him to say, I'm home.

I'm very emotional because this was what he always wanted.

This is something that has been 100 plus years in the making.

Cause we keep thinking that it's just us.

So we are gathering soil from Cudgel's memorial to take back to Africa.

In the African tradition, it is the women who are to take and the men who are to give.

It's a ritual that serves throughout time.

And it feels like that's what we're about to do in Benin.

This is something for the ancestors, it's something for us, And it's something for future generations.

Dalecia, does this exist for you and your body anywhere?

For me, I'm not blood related to Cudjoe, but we are family, you know?

Delisha's ancestor was also on the Clotilda, a royal prince named Gumpa.

People are like, oh my God, you're royalty.

It would be nice, but there's a very ugly side of that story.

He was related to the king at the time, Lele, the same king who ordered the raid on Cudjoe's village.

Gumpa did something that offended him, and the royal family wanted to get rid of him.

And that's how he ended up on the Clothilda.

Betrayed by his own family, Gumpa emerged as a beloved leader of Africatown, where part of his legacy still stands today.

The last structure remaining from that time is Gumpa's chimney.

It's a symbol of how the people of the Clotilda came together.

Yesterday I was able to place a couple of flowers out there, say thank you for all the things that they endured and survived, and

dig up some of the soil from around the chimney.

And I plan on taking that back with me to Benin.

And hopefully I can leave some of it in the palace.

This is our way of giving back by them fulfilling the long ago request of their ancestor and taking him home.

I think it heals something for all of us who will never be able to do that.

Before this reverse journey begins, the descendants wish to pay their respects to all the people aboard the Clotilda, whose stories may have been lost but never forgotten.

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Fulfilling Survivors' Dream (Full Episode) | Clotilda: The Return Home | National Geographic

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