Debates on reparations for slavery have emerged on national and international levels. However, much of the discourse centers on the "legitimate" slave trade. Few people are cognizant of the fact that the transatlantic slave trade consisted of both a "legal" trade and an illegal trade that began after January 1, 1808. Despite statutory prohibitions against slave smuggling, American citizens continued to smuggle African captives into the United States up to and beyond the threshold of the Civil War. The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA is the only well-documented work of serious nonfiction that chronicles the transatlantic smuggling expedition of the slaver Clotilda during the slave trade's illegal period, dramatizing the plight of her captives from the point of capture in the West African interior to the point of disembarkation in Mobile, Alabama in 1860, and tracing the specific means by which the captives triumphed over their tragedy.