Sotterley Presents: People and Perspectives, Remembering Their Voices: Connecting the History and Archaeology of the São José Paquete de Africa and the Clotilda Slave Shipwrecks with Kamau Sadiki

July 6, 2022

Historic Sotterley is excited to welcome Kamau Sadiki as our featured speaker for Sotterley Presents: People and Perspectives.

On Wednesday, July 13, 2022, at 7:00 p.m., at 44300 Sotterley Lane in Hollywood, MD.

Kamau Sadiki is the immediate past President of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers (NABS).

He is a lifetime NABS member and served as its Vice President from 2011 to 2017. He is a member of the Class of 2006 Underwater Adventure Seekers Scuba Diving Club based in Washington, DC, a founding club of NABS. He is a certified PADI Divemaster

Kamau is a board member and Lead Instructor for Diving with a Purpose and studies slave shipwrecks using advanced underwater archaeological techniques. Sadiki was a member of the dive teams that explored both the first slave ship documented, the São José Paquete de Africa, and the last slave ship to bring captured Africans into the US, the Clotilda. Kamau Sadiki will lead an illuminating discussion about both shipwrecks and the connection they shared.

Diving With A Purpose (DWP), an international organization committed to resurrecting the stories of slave shipwrecks from the bottom of the sea through underwater archaeology documentation. DWP and Kamau were featured in the cover story of the March 2022 issue of the National Geographics magazine.

He is also featured in the NatGeo podcast “Into the Depths,” which explores the work of DWP and the journey of NatGeo Explorer Tara Roberts. Along with the São José Paquete de Africa and the Clotilda shipwrecks, he has worked on multiple shipwreck sites around Mozambique Island, Mozambique, and shipwrecks in the NOAA Thunder Bay, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuaries and Biscayne National Marine Park off the southern Florida coast and in St. John, United States Virgin Islands.

In August 2015, he was a member of the first underwater archaeology field team to document a Tuskegee Airmen P-39 Airacobra airplane that crashed in Lake Huron, one of five that crashed in the lake during WWII training.

Photo of Kamau Sadiki credited to Wayne Lawrence/NatGeo

FREE WEBINAR for the public – Advance registration required.

Click here to Register!