Original subtitles

This is where it starts.

Altevese, Garry, 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...

Oh my God.

...to honor.

Is the king saying my ancestor was

not sold into slavery?

This is absolutely universal.

This is all of our history.

And that just feels really powerful to me.

Come on! Come on!

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.

How do you want to start?

But the part of their work that I most connect

to is this workaround diving for slave shipwrecks.

There were approximately 36,000 voyages that brought

12.5 million Africans to the Americas.

We are going to measure this wreckage.

Most often, we think of the people on

these slave ships as cargo,

as like faceless statistics...

Welcome back!

...but they were people.

They were mothers, daughters, husbands, sons.

They were princes. They were kings.

They were farmers, dreamers, scientists, teachers.

They were all of that,

but we don't often see them in that way.

And 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 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.

Alright, y'all. So where are we?

We are at the monument of our ancestor,

Kossola Oluale.

Whose slave name was Cudjo Lewis.

We're going to take some soil in order to represent him

and take him home.

Home for Kossola 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,

and forced onto the last known slave ship to America,

the Clotilda.

Kossola was only 19 years old.

Kossola said that when

he went onto the ship,

there was a man standing there, and he said,

"Take your clothes off.

You won't need this where you're going."

And that right there, taking his country cloth,

it just took something out of him.

Kossola 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.

Kossola, renamed Cudjo Lewis and 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 first wish? To return to Africa.

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 of the Clotilda brought home here.

They purchased land from their former enslaver and

called it Africatown.

They built a community complete with houses,

a 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.

Cudjo, 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 were that he wanted

to go back to Africa.

He wanted to see his family.

He always say, I want to see my mom.

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

"I'm home. You did a good job."

Altevese, what are you feeling?

You mean, what's coming back up?

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

and we get to be the ones that do it.

That's a big deal.

Because this is huge.

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

- We got it. Yeah. - Yeah.

Remind me of that when we're there.

Cause we keep thinking that--

- It's just us. - It's just us.

- Yeah. - But we're not in this alone.

No.

So, we are gathering soil from Cudjo'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.

Delisha, does this exist for you in your body anywhere?

For me, I'm not blood-related to Cudjo,

but we are family,

and that was the spirit of Africatown.

Delisha's ancestor was

also on the Clotilda, a royal prince named Gumpa.

People are like, oh my God,

you're royalty, and I'm like, I'm really not.

It would be nice,

but there's a very ugly side of that story.

Gumpa was a member of the royal family.

He was related to the king at the time, Glele.

The same king who ordered the raid

on Cudjo'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 Clotilda.

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.

On some level,

it's just you honoring your grandfather.

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.

I was a little girl,

and my father would make us repeat the ship and

the year that they came over and over again.

When the Clotilda arrived in 1860,

importing enslaved people into the U.S. had

been illegal for decades.

So, after the captain offloaded everyone,

he burned and sank the ship to destroy any evidence.

One day, I got tired, and I said,

"Dad," I said,

"why do we keep doing this over and over again?"

He say, "They think we don't know what we saying because we

don't have proof of a ship,"

he say, "but it's out there, and you always remember."

For 159 years,

the only evidence of Clotilda's illegal voyage was

the firsthand accounts of its survivors.

Then, in 2019, a discovery was made.

Yes, it is Clotilda.

So all of us said we don't have to

pass it on to our kids the way he did it.

We can talk about it because we got proof.

We can throw these flowers as a way

to say thank you to the ancestors and

ask them for their protection as they watch over us.

For the ancestors!

To the ancestors!

We're going home.

I think it's going to be really emotional.

And I just want to take it in. I want to feel it in my heart.

I think it'll make me whole.

Going back to Benin having a conversation

with descendants of King Glele, we are distantly related,

so that brings up a whole other set of mixed emotions.

The hope is that whomever we encounter on

the other side is going to be just as encouraged,

just as joyful to connect with us.

As we are trying to connect with them.

This is an opportunity and

an experience to reckon, to heal, to honor,

and that just feels really powerful to me.

Benin, a small gem in the heart of West Africa.

Everywhere in this vibrant country,

echoes of its past are palpable:

ancient kingdoms, revolutions,

and independence from France since 1960.

And the people welcomed us so warmly as soon as we arrived.

This is where it starts.

I'm excited! We're here!

We're home. We're, we're officially home.

Welcome. Welcome.

He says, "Welcome to the land of your ancestors."

Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome! Have a nice journey!

There's so many of us,

like my mom, my grandma, my grandfather.

We're not with only us.

You know, we're bringing everybody.

We're on our way to Ouidah,

a coastal town that has remarkably transformed from

the busiest slave market in West Africa to the spiritual

heart of Benin.

Cudjo and Gumpa's last steps on African soil

were here in 1860,

and it's where our reverse journey begins.

Standing on the shore,

the weight of the horror and injustices that

awaited those torn from their homeland washed over us.

He was being stripped from his home.

He didn't know where he was going.

He didn't have any family with him.

He was being taken away from everything that he knew

and that he loved, never to see them again.

They stole his family,

and I'm mad as hell that they did that.

It took us 162 years to get back here.

They say that the Atlantic is churning

with these lost souls.

1.8 million Africans died in the middle passage.

That's the crossing from Africa to the Americas.

Just in the crossing, 1.8 million people died.

Overlooking Ouidah Beach is a monument that represents

The Door of No Return.

There are many such "doors."

Sometimes literal doors. Other times, open spaces.

They exist up and down the coast where slavers from

the Americas and Europe loaded their ships with people

who had been captured,

kidnapped, bought, and sold.

Cudjo and Gumpa came from different parts of the

warring Dahomey empire.

One captured in a raid and sold as a prisoner of war.

The other betrayed by his relative, the king,

and given away as a gift.

But today, they return together,

carried symbolically by their descendants.

So we're here in Ouidah in the Village of Zoungbodji,

and this is called the Tree of Return.

And that just means that captive Africans would walk

around it three times so that their souls would remain here

even though their bodies were being taken far away.

We're returning.

We're returning them.

Yeah, they're physically not here,

so we're returning on their behalf.

To me, it feels like getting closer

to their soul.

When I first came, I didn't feel anything.

But then, when I put everybody's hand together,

then I was just like, 'bam'.

It just started to clicking.

Can I touch it, too?

Yeah, get in here.

This is your ancestors, too.

This is everybody's ancestors.

You're right. You're right.

I know that at least 20% of my blood comes from Benin.

So you're right.

Like this is--

Me, too.

This is you now communing

with your ancestor.

- Wow - Absolutely. Yeah.

When I started this journey,

I was like, does it really matter?

Do your ancestors, I don't know,

does it really make a difference?

And I think it does.

I think knowing who you are gives you strength,

gives you confidence.

And that is absolutely something that's universal.

All right, I know that you have a ritual that you want to do,

so I am going to step away and let you do it.

Billy Adams.

Ashe

John Africa.

Ashe

- Lancer Africa. - Ashe.

We are calling the names of those

that are known that have departed on the Clotilda.

And we tried to use as many African names as we could.

- Omolabi - Ashe.

As they read the names of

Clotilda survivors out loud,

I thought about what all the captured Africans who

walked around this tree were forced to leave behind.

When you separate people from everything

that looks like them,

from everything that sounds like them,

they lose their entire self.

Ashe.

- Lottie Dennison. - Ashe.

- Samuel Johnson. - Ashe.

- Anna Keeby. - Ashe.

- Gumpa. - Ashe

- Kossola Oluale. - Ashe.

We've been invited to an Egungun ceremony,

a West African dance tradition that manifests the spirits of

ancestors for remembrance, celebration, and blessings.

The timing was perfect.

The descendants of Cudjo and Gumpa are embarking on

the next phase of their reverse journey,

the slave market.

Ouidah was one of the most important

slave towns on the west coast of Africa.

When the slaves were brought from the

different wars that existed,

they were brought to the slave market,

chosen by different slave traders before they

would board the ships.

So I'm just imagining Cudjo on the platform.

I can only imagine, first of all,

how degrading it is because you're in front of

a crowd of people,

and you have these strangers poking and prodding.

You don't know what they're saying.

You don't know what's happening.

Yeah.

Can you tell us a little bit about Gumpa, Delisha?

He was here at the market.

He looked very dignified, very beautiful,

dark brown chocolate skin.

As I understand it, Gumpa was given away as a gift.

Almost 18,000 Africans were taken

from the port of Ouidah every year.

And that is why we consider it as a genocide.

It is a genocide.

The next stop on our journey is the place

where Cudjo was held before he came here.

That was a barracoon.

Barracoons were outdoor stockades where captured

Africans were held for days, even months, until ships,

like the Clotilda,

arrived to take them across the Atlantic.

There were five major forts in Ouidah:

the Danish, the Dutch, the French, the English,

and the Portuguese fort.

They were kept chained here until the ships were ready.

Oh, my goodness.

Those are shackles?

Those are shackles.

Oh, my God. Oh, my--

That's a neck shackle.

Oh, my God.

Imagine this around your neck and the weight.

Captives could be up to 60, 80, 100,

200 that were kept here with very little, no food.

Only once in a day, they were fed.

How do you think the women's felt?

That was the first thing that came to mind.

If you're having your menstrual cycle.

Or if you're pregnant.

Trafficking that many people, you know,

through a fort like this.

Which I'm sure was not cleaned,

so whatever the group of people did in here once

they were taken away,

another group came in and sat in the blood,

in the feces, in the urine.

You're now sitting in yours and someone else's.

This is a lot to ingest.

On average, they were spending roughly

two months here.

And then you're at the market.

Right.

You're at the market like

you're a cow waiting to be sold.

The moats are just around the fence that

circles the old fort.

They were infested with crocodiles.

It is believed that there were some that were thrown

into the gutters.

Cassandra, you want to lead us in prayer?

Lord, Father God, this room here,

it's just a spirit here,

it's just making us feel kind of down.

I ask you to lift us up and carry us in a decent way.

Amen.

We're off to Abomey,

once the capital of the Dahomey kingdom.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries,

twelve kings reigned,

many of whom expanded the kingdom by conquering

neighboring tribes and selling captives to be enslaved.

During that era, Dahomey became one of the most powerful

kingdoms on the West Coast of Africa.

Today, the country of Benin is no longer a monarchy,

it's a republic, and the title of king is primarily

a ceremonial one.

Let us prostrate. Like this.

The King of the most powerful

Dahomey Kingdom wants to

renew his gratitude.

Everybody accepts today that

the slave trade was a crime against humanity.

And today, we are ready to

move forward in a partnership,

in a strength building between Africans and Africans

of the diaspora.

And that is why His Majesty is

expecting you to come back again.

All his children, all his grandchildren,

they should come back home.

Wow, this is amazing.

You can't even imagine.

It's a sense of peace,

it's a sense of comfort.

This is what Afro-Americans need to know.

Yeah, that they can always come home.

After our visit with the current king,

we're now off to meet a direct descendant of

a past king.

Like Delisha, this descendant can trace

his lineage to King Glele,

who ordered the raid on Cudjo's village and exiled

Gumpa from the royal court.

The king is very happy to welcome you.

Thank you.

If you have any questions,

it is your time to ask him.

Can you tell us a little about Glele

and what he was like?

When the King Glele come to power,

he reign with peace and with progress of the

Kingdom of Dahomey.

He liked people. He liked Europeans.

He liked everybody.

Because the King has such a

good relationship with the Europeans,

did he know what European slavery was like?

The King of Abomey never sold people as a slave.

Those men and women travel to America to

work with those Europeans,

and they want to have a good relationship

with those Europeans,

so if today we talk about slavery,

it's to show the negative parts of the kingdom of Abomey,

but that is not right.

It is wrong. So this is the facts.

Is the King saying the fact is that

my ancestor was not sold into slavery?

The King said that they never sold people.

Because my ancestor, Kossola,

told his children and his children's children that he

did not go willingly.

To say that Africans were not sold into slavery

is not only false,

but it makes it seem as though he thinks I'm foolish.

I feel very much so mocked by the laughter,

and that got me more enraged to the point to where

I wanted to get up and walk away.

I was stunned.

Do you know we lost relatives?

And for you to sit here and deny it,

it was shocking to me.

I didn't want the conversation to go

where it was going.

I just didn't want nobody to be hurt.

He's not going to say that his family was part of an

illegal slave trade.

I don't expect for him to say that he's wrong.

The king started off saying these things

that impacted us all.

But then he changed his tune,

but he didn't change his tune on his own.

Someone on our team went to the prince and told him

no, no, no, no, no, no, this is what happened,

and you will not disrespect us.

The king says for

reconciliation to take place,

it is important to continue to talk,

to continue to exchange,

for us to be finally, how you say?

Cleansed. Cleansed, exactly.

I have a final question.

Why not sell them,

send them to a place where they can

keep their culture intact,

where they can be with their people,

where they can eventually return home?

Because in America,

they are completely cut off from their language,

from their people, from their culture,

From their families.

So why send them to a place

where you know they will never have contact with

what is most deeply pure of them?

It's okay.

It's not okay. It's not.

It's okay. This is what we came for.

We came for answers.

I did notice other ladies that were crying.

And that was a sense of comfort for me.

Regardless of what else has happened,

regardless of what anyone else is saying, you get it,

and you're with me in spirit, and you feel my pain.

Both sides need to take ownership.

So I'm equally mad at Glele and people like him who

enslave their own.

That doesn't diminish any of the part that slave traders and

slave owners played in this.

Everyone needs to be held accountable for what happened.

And that is why a lot of people are still angry.

Some of the elders from Glele's family

took me into Glele's personal palace.

This would be where Gumpa would hang out like in everyday life.

Prior to leaving Alabama,

I dug up some soil which is around the chimney that

still remains of the house that he lived in...

Welcome home, Gumpa.

...to give his soul a release and to fulfill his wish.

...thy kingdom come, thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day, our daily bread,

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

For thine is kingdom, the power and glory forever.

Amen.

I know it's something that he's been wanting,

and my family's been wanting to do for 162 years.

So finally being able to do that for him,

it feels very freeing, and I hope he's at peace as well.

We're on our way to Bant�.

Yes. I am so excited.

Like I can barely contain myself.

What about you, Garry?

Do you feel nervous about anything at all?

I'm just going to take it in.

That has to be exciting.

I'm excited for you, guys.

Oh, wow. Do y'all see this?

Oh, my God.

Scores of people.

Old people, young people. Men. Women.

You got my brother's nose.

You got my sister's eyes. You got my cousin's cheeks.

Everybody represents somebody.

I didn't feel like a stranger anymore.

The oldest of the elders just told us welcome back home,

you're home, you're our family,

your family is here.

And every person just echoed that sentiment,

and it really did feel that way.

He's very glad because your ancestor

write his story

and because of his story

you know the route

and you've come back home.

I am so overwhelmed.

I have snot coming out my nose now.

Like, I'm thinking, okay this is the

path that he walked.

Like even just in his normal everyday, just going places,

this is the ground that his feet touched,

and then coming back into the village,

these are the songs that he sang.

These are the dances that he did.

These are the drums that he saw, and he heard.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

These are the faces that he saw.

These are the faces,

these are his people, and these are my people,

and they're saying you're home, you're home.

Yes, yes, yes!

This isn't even my story, but it is my story.

It is your story,

it's all of our stories, it is.

It is your story.

The moment had finally come to ceremoniously

bring Cudjo Lewis home.

So it was a ceremony that we had to perform,

a ritual that could only be performed by blood relatives.

And it had to do with us giving him an offering,

and it was really just us inviting him back,

his spirit back into the village,

and then sealing it in a way where his spirit is tethered

to his village.

I'm so excited.

I had to get down and draw the map.

Pour it out, Cassandra.

We're going to put Pop-pop in the middle.

Put the heart in there, yeah.

We spread Cudjo's and his wife's

soil in the middle with the heart.

We placed soil from our

other ancestors from Mobile, bringing them home as well.

Tell them to call Cudjo.

Tell him to come home.

Louder. Louder! Louder! Louder!

Bring him home, come on.

Bring him home!

That wasn't just me. That was the family.

That was the people of the village.

That was everybody!

Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on!

When it ended.

I said is it done?

And he said yes.

So I had to turn to everybody and say it's done.

It wasn't my family returning home.

But it was.

The stories of our ancestors,

specifically African American people,

are human stories.

And they're not just about the condition of enslavement.

There is joy. There is power.

There is agency. This work is about discovery.

We're ready. We're good, we're good.

It's about remembering and honoring and

reckoning and restoring,

and ultimately, it's about healing.

Where we performed our ceremony,

that is a part of the three acres of land that the village

has gifted us.

The expectation is that we come back.

Which we will.

Our journey wasn't over yet.

The town of Bant� had a surprise for

Cudjo's descendants.

Oh my goodness gracious,

you have got to be kidding me.

When we saw it,

I spotted it from afar,

and I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

The statue was so beautiful.

Wow, look at this!

Do you want to read it out loud?

"Cudjo Oluale Kossola Lewis

from Benin to Alabama, USA,

last survivor of the last known slave ship to

enter the United States.

He was one of over 100 African men and women purchased

and brought across the Atlantic to Mobile, Alabama,

aboard the slave ship Clotilda."

They never forgot him.

He must've sent out some strong vibes back here, man,

for them to remember him like this.

Yeah.

My hope that as people listen to this story,

as they connect to this miraculous,

amazing opportunity for the descendants to

connect with their roots,

that something gets healed in our world.

And that feels like, that's everything.