Diving With A Purpose: Connecting Ancestral Memory through the History and Archaeology of Slave Shipwrecks

Presenter

Kamau Sadiki, DWP board member and lead instructor,
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council member 

About the Lecture

This lecture is part of our Black History Month programming.

Join Kamau Sadiki from Diving With A Purpose as he shares the unfathomable stories of two shipwrecks involved in the Transatlantic Era of African enslavement through underwater archaeology documentation:

• São José Paquete de Africa, which crashed into the rocks off Clifton Beach in Cape Town, South Africa, on December 27, 1794. Of the 500 captured Africans onboard, 212 lost their lives.

• Clotilda, which sailed into Mobile Bay, Alabama, on July 9, 1860, ending an illegal mission as the last slave ship to bring captured Africans into the USA to be enslaved. There were 110 imprisoned human souls from present day Benin in its cargo hold. 

The wreckage of the slave ships would be discovered, São José Paquete de Africa in June 2015 and Clotilda in June 2018. Kamau participated in some of the underwater archaeological work on these wrecks as a strategic partner with the Slave Wrecks Project, SEARCH Inc., and Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American Culture.

In this immersive lecture, Kamau will highlight the work of DWP, a non-profit organization of SCUBA divers whose primary mission is to bring back into memory the stories of shipwrecks involved in the commodification and enslavement of Black bodies.

Attendees are welcome to send comments or questions to Kamau, and he will answer following the lecture.

Registration information:

Advance registration is required whether you attend the lecture in person or online. Evening lectures will be in person in the Main Lobby and livestreamed.

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