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Remembering Matilda, the last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade
Her name at birth was Abake – meaning ‘born to be loved by all’ among the Tarkar people of Western Africa.
The precise details of her capture are unknown but, like millions before them, Abake and the other captives were very likely tied together in groups, with ropes and wooden yokes, and forced to march hundreds of miles to the coastal port of Ouidah, now a city in southern Benin. Alabama, along with Virginia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, seceded from the US and formed the Confederate States of America – on the grounds that the institution of slavery, the lifeblood of southern economies, was threatened by the federal government in Washington. To counter this, southern states, including Matilda’s home of Alabama, enacted the so-called “Black Codes”, curtailing the right of African Americans to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land or move freely in public spaces.
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