10/26/2026
Before you scroll past this woman’s face, take a moment to learn her name.
Redoshi was born around 1848 in West Africa, in the region that is now Benin. When she was approximately 12 years old, she was kidnapped and forced aboard the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to bring enslaved Africans illegally into the United States.
In 1860, the ship transported approximately 110 African captives to Mobile, Alabama. This happened more than 50 years after the United States had prohibited the importation of enslaved people from abroad. The law had changed, but people still risked everything to continue this cruel trade.
When Redoshi arrived in Alabama, she was sold to Washington Smith, a plantation owner who gave her the name Sally Smith. She was forced to work on his Bogue Chitto plantation, in both the house and the fields.
Imagine being a child taken thousands of miles from everything familiar: your family, your community, your language, and the life you should have been allowed to live. Redoshi endured enslavement and the loss of her freedom. She later had a daughter and continued living in Alabama after emancipation.
Slavery legally ended in the United States in 1865, but freedom did not erase the years of suffering or restore everything that had been taken from her. Redoshi remained in Alabama and died in 1937.
Her story was pieced together through historical records, a newspaper interview, written accounts, and rare film footage. In 1938, footage of her appeared in a U.S. Department of Agriculture instructional film. Think about that: a woman kidnapped as a child in 1860 was still alive when cameras recorded her decades later.
Redoshi was once identified by researchers as the last living survivor of the Middle Passage. Later research identified Matilda McCrear, another survivor of the Clotilda, who lived until 1940. The important truth is not a competition over who lived longest. It is that these survivors were real people whose stories deserve to be preserved.
The Clotilda was deliberately burned and sunk to hide evidence of its illegal voyage. After emancipation, some of its survivors reunited and established Africatown near Mobile, Alabama, building a community connected to their West African heritage.
Why does Redoshi’s story matter to HISTORA?
Because history is not only about presidents, wars, and powerful men. It is also about the children who were kidnapped, the women whose names were changed, the families that were separated, and the survivors whose lives were rarely recorded in their own words.
HISTORA exists to bring these overlooked lives into the light, carefully checking the evidence so that remembrance is built on truth not myths or exaggeration.
Now I want to ask you:
1. Before seeing this post, had you ever heard of Redoshi or the Clotilda?
2. Why do you think so many people learn about slavery without learning the names and personal stories of the people who survived it?
3. Should stories like Redoshi’s be taught more fully in schools around the world? Why or why not?
Share your thoughts respectfully. Every name recovered from history helps us understand the human cost of the past.
We do not glorify violence. We reveal truth so history can’t repeat itself.
