Sometimes the waves work against them, but the Black divers uncovering drowned Black history resist the currents – AND the fact that this critical history has been hidden for centuries.
Kamau Sadiki is one of many divers working to uncover Black history. He discovered the Sao Jose-Paquete de Africa, a ship full of enslaved Mozambicans that sank off Cape Town in 1794. Over 200 people drowned, and survivors were resold.
It gets deeper.
Out of 500 to 1,000 ships wrecked during the Transatlantic Slave Trade, only five have been found and two have been adequately documented.
Diving With A Purpose (DWP) is a non-profit bringing this history to shore. They’re committed to protecting, documenting, and interpreting slave trade shipwrecks.
In 2019, the organization helped locate the Clotilda, the last known ship to bring enslaved Africans to the US. Some Clotilda descendants still reside in Alabama’s Africatown! They’ve kept this crucial history from being lost forever.
Explorer and writer Tara Roberts also dives, searching for this lost history in her family – and African descendant communities across the world.
Every time we touch the Atlantic we’re standing in water that many Black people didn’t make it across – dreamers, poets, scholars, farmers, and scientists with stories predating enslavement.
They’re doing the work to tell Black stories accurately and with the honor our history deserves!