Redoshi
also known as Sally Smith, was the second-to-last living African-born survivor of U.S. slavery. She was born in present-day Benin on the west coast of Africa. Redoshi was one of around 110 West African children and young people who comprised the human cargo of the schooner Clotilda, the last slave ship to reach the United States. The Clotilda docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860, fifty-two years after a federal law had been enacted that banned the importation of slaves to the country. Redoshi outlived all other known Clotilda survivors with the exception of Matilda McCrear, who died in January 1940. Another Clotilda survivor, Kossola/Cudjo Lewis , died in 1935. Little is known about Redoshi’s early life, although a newspaper article suggested that she was the daughter-in-law of a chief and that her father upheld the law in her community (Montgomery Advertiser, 31 ..
Article, 2020
African American Studies Center, 20200917
2020