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2022 Sundance Film Festival: 'Descendant'

Used with permission of Participant Media

In 1860, the Clotilda docked in Mobile, Alabama — the last known slave ship to land on U.S. shores. The ship's story and legacy are the subject of Descendant, a documentary screening at this year's Sundance Film Festival and the focus of our show this hour.

The Clotilda’s arrival in the U.S. was an illegal venture. Although chattel slavery wouldn’t be legally abolished in the United States until 1865, it had been against the law to import enslaved people for decades. Funded by plantation owner Timothy Meaher, and captained by one William Foster, they (likely) burned and sunk Clotilda to cover up their crime. But the ship's legacy lived on, and in 2019, the Clotilda was found. We'll talk with director Margaret Brown, diver Kamau Sadiki and writer Torry Threadcraft this Friday at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. about what the ship means to America's past and present.

You can read Torry Threadcraft's article for The Atlantic "The Power of Untold Slave Narratives," here.

Learn more about Descendant on the Sundance Film Festival website here.

Air date: Jan. 28, 2022 at 11 a.m. and 7 pm. MT

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