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The wreck of the last slave ship ever to reach American shores has been found in a river delta near Mobile, Alabama, according to the state's historical commission. In 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, the schooner Clotilda took aboard 110 individuals in West Africa and sailed across the Atlantic to deliver them to slaveowners in Mobile. After they were unloaded, the ship was burned outside of the port. The transatlantic slave trade had already been banned in the U.S. for decades, and at the time of the landing, importing African people for purposes of slavery was...

The last ship known to have smuggled slaves from Africa to the US is said to have been discovered after a year-long investigation. The remains of the Clotilda were found at the bottom of the Mobile river in Alabama. The ship was used to smuggle men, women and children into America from Africa. It operated in secret, decades after Congress banned the importation of slaves, and was intentionally sunk in 1860 to hide evidence of its use. "The discovery of the Clotilda is an extraordinary archaeological find," Lisa Demetropoulos Jones, executive director of the Alabama Historical Commission (AHC), told the...

Roughly 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection: She located the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the United States. ... In fact, they are only now being released to the public in a book called Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” that comes out on May 8, 2018... he was only 19 years old when members of the neighboring Dahomian tribe captured him and took him to the coast. There, he and about 120 others were sold into slavery and crammed onto the...

Investigators have determined that an old wooden wreck found on the Alabama Gulf Coast isn't the last slave ship to land in the United States, the Alabama Historical Commission said Monday.

"I am just begging them to forgive us, because we sold them. Our forefathers sold their brothers and sisters. I am not the person to talk to them. No! May their souls rest in peace, perfect peace. They should forgive us. They should," Posset said, wiping tears from his cheeks. "Qualified people will come and talk to them in due time. I feel so sad."