 The lore in Africatown has always been that the shipmates knew more about being free than they did about being slaves because they had been free for their whole lives. And the lore in the neighborhood is that the shipmates had to teach emancipated people who had grown up in America how to be free. So they taught the American-born people how to hunt, how to fish, how to live as independent people. What they wanted most of all was to go back home.