Raines Highlights By the Bay Eastern Shore Speaker Series

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Posted on March 25, 2024

Amber Day

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The USA by the Bay Eastern Shore Speaker Series features a diverse range of lectures and performances by artists, scholars and industry experts at the University of South Alabama Baldwin County Campus in Fairhope. South’s new Environmental Fellow and Writer-in-Residence Ben Raines will present "Saving the Clotilda and America’s Amazon: A Prescription for South Alabama’s Future” on Thursday, April 4 at 5:30 p.m. A reception will follow.

This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited at the USA Baldwin County Campus Performance Center. Registration is required at SouthAlabama.edu/SpeakerSeries. 

Raines, best known for discovering the remains of the Clotilda, the last ship to carry enslaved Africans to the United States, recently joined the University of South Alabama as its first environmental fellow and writer-in-residence. Raines is a former reporter for Mobile’s Press-Register, and most of his stories emphasize the extraordinary biodiversity of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. 

At South, Raines works for the Stokes School of Marine and Environmental Sciences and the Stokes Center for Creative Writing, both named after Dr. Steven and Angelia Stokes for their support of the University. 

Raines is also well-known for his documentary films such as “The Underwater Forest” and “Saving America’s Amazon,” along with books such as “The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How the Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning.” 

This year, Raines plans to work on his novel and a memoir. He’s also in production on a new documentary, “The Last Estuary,” which focuses on Mobile Bay.

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