Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis was the longest-living survivor of the Clotilda. the last-recorded slave ship to land in the United States in Mobile Bay. In the 1860s, Lewis founded Africatown with a group of other Clotilda survivors – just three miles north of downtown Mobile. Many of Lewis’ descendants still live in Africatown today.
April Livingston is an artist and resident of Mobile. In 2016, she created a bust of Lewis for Africatown’s Union Missionary Baptist Church. In this StoryCorps interview, April tells her boyfriend Andrew about the time she spent on this project and how it has led to her personal growth.
*The original monument was carved by Henry Williams in 1959 and was stolen from the courtyard in front of the Union Baptist Church of Plateau outside of Mobile in 2002...
Edited by Anastasiya Titarenko