Matilda McCrear: The Last Living Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Upon my birth, the State of Alabama identified me as "colored." In my lifetime, our label has moved from "colored" to "Negro" to "Black" to "African-American." These identifiers were initially used to ensure we would be reminded constantly that in the eyes of the law we were neither fully human nor full citizens. As a child, I remember the sense of pride in proclaiming "Black Power" and "I'm Black and I'm proud" as statements of resistance to the common narrative even if only at home with our parents. The Black Lives Matter movement is a proclamation of another truth long denied as we demand the undoing of white supremacy.

My elders affirmed our inherent God-given dignity as they shared their lived experiences of blatant oppression as descendants of enslaved Africans. As a child, the kidnapping and enslavement of my  ancestors seemed parts of the distant past as did the Emancipation Proclamation. Most of my great-great-grandparents had been enslaved and considered to be property. My not knowing them made their experiences appear far removed from mine.

In reality, I was born less than 100 years after the Civil War. Two months ago, even this thought was shattered when I learned of Matilda McCrear.  On January 1, 1808, a law took effect prohibiting the importing of enslaved Africans. Fifty years later, the owner of the Clotilda, a ship used in the slave trade, was confident he could bring in a load of kidnapped Africans through Mobile Bay as human cargo.

Matilda McCrear was one of these persons. She was kidnapped in her native West Africa as a toddler along with her mother and siblings. They were transported as human cargo on the Clotilda's last run arriving in Alabama in 1859 or 1860. Having lived approximately 80 years on this land that celebrated white supremacy, she died in 1940.

1940? This means that Matilda McCrear lived within 20 years of my birth. In my childhood, this period of time would have seemed so long. Now, it feels like yesterday. As millions of others before her, a child was kidnapped, taken through the Door of No Return, thrown into the Middle Passage, and thrust into the abomination known as chattel slavery. She would have tasted the promise of Reconstruction before the birth of Jim Crow extinguished it.

Matilda McCrear was the last known living survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. I cannot verbalize how jolting it was to realize that our breathing the air of Alabama was separated by less than two decades. Her lived experience still brings me to tears. There is something in my physical being that reacts to this reality. Our lives do not exist in a vacuum. History is truly present even when the dominant group prefers  to deny or omit it. The life of Matilda McCrear and countless others underscores the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement today, now.