Sylviane Diouf:

And so they actually named the settlement Africatown, which tells you who they were, who they wanted to remain, and where they actually wanted to be.

The residents of Africatown, as it came to be known, built a church and a school. They elected a leader and set up a court system. And they taught their native languages to their children, trying to preserve some of the culture of the homeland they'd been violently forced to leave.