Surviving the Clotilda
In Mobile, Alabama, the new Africatown Heritage House honors the community built by the survivors of America’s last slave ship
In 1860, it had been illegal to import enslaved Africans into the United States for over fifty years, but the Navy’s enforcement of the ban didn’t stop a steady stream of smugglers from bringing more enslaved people to Southern shores. The federal punishment for the crime was severe, but Mobile shipyard and mill owner Timothy Meaher allegedly made a bet for $1,000 that Southern lawbreakers would never be reprimanded, bragging that he himself could bring enslaved Africans into Alabama with no repercussions.
“Meaher’s response is not recorded, but the case would have been easy to make,” writes Nick Tabor in the book Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and The Community It Created. “To begin with, what Southern jury would convict a man for importing Africans? White southerners, even poor ones, had come to associate the expansion of slavery with general economic growth and prosperity.”
Meaher set out to fulfill his promise. He enlisted the aid of shipbuilder and captain William Foster. In March 1860, Foster boarded his two-masted schooner Clotilda with a crew and a bag filled with Meaher’s gold.
“They (Foster and crew) would sail down the winding Chickasaw Creek, into the delta, where it met the Mobile River, down the chute into Mobile Bay, past the wooded Dauphin Island, and into the Gulf of Mexico,” Tabor writes. “According to one version of the story, their papers said they were hauling lumber to St. Thomas, in the Danish Virgin Islands. But the ultimate route on Foster’s maps was for Africa.”
Foster returned to Alabama with 110 enslaved African men, women and children from Dahomey (today, Southern Benin) onboard the Clotilda. Upon arrival, Foster destroyed the evidence by stacking the Clotilda with firewood and setting her ablaze, left to sink into a muddy section of the Mobile Delta.
Although word got out of the brazenly unlawful importation, and an investigation followed, no action was ever taken by the United States government against Meaher and Foster.
Meaher was right, after all. And the Clotilda became America’s last slave ship.
Africatown
After arriving on American soil in May 1860, the captives onboard the Clotilda were sold to area plantation owners or relegated to work on the Meaher property. They stood out beside most of Alabama’s other enslaved people—who had at this point spent decades assimilating to the new world, or had been born here. These newcomers mainly kept to themselves, and occasionally resisted their captivity.
“…there were limits to what they put up with,” Tabor writes. “At least twice the men ganged up on Americans who tried to use violence against the African women.”
Five years after their arrival, the Civil War ended and these last enslaved Africans were freed. A group of them approached Foster with money saved from post-war earnings and asked to be returned home. Foster refused, claiming that their savings would not cover expenses.
Disheartened but not discouraged, the group vowed to save enough to purchase land and start their own community in South Alabama. By 1870, they purchased acreage on what would become the Mobile neighborhood Lewis Quarters. Two years later, another group from the Clotilda bought adjacent land that would become the neighborhood of Plateau. They built churches and homes and eventually a school—establishing their own self-sustaining community where they could speak their own languages and continue their traditions in this strange world. The broader community, located three miles north of downtown Mobile, became known as Africa Town, later shortened by locals to Africatown.
[Read about the River Road African American Museum in Donaldsonville here.]
“What makes this story so significant is what they achieved after 1865,” said Jeremy Ellis, a descendant of Clotilda survivors Pollee and Rose Allen. “Look at what they achieved in those ten years from early freedom to 1874. To me, that’s monumental. They showed their resiliency in 1865.”
For many years, Africatown thrived despite the challenges of Jim Crowe laws and segregation. Community leaders such as Oluale Kossola, who later became known as Cudjo Lewis, married and raised a family. His story and those of the other Africans would have become lost to time except for journalists occasionally writing of the town over the course of its history, and for novelist Zora Neale Hurston’s interview of Lewis for her book Barracoon, which was published posthumously in 2018.
“What makes this story so significant is what they achieved after 1865. . . Look at what they achieved in those ten years from early freedom to 1874. To me, that’s monumental. They showed their resiliency in 1865.” —Jeremy Ellis, a descendant of Clotilda survivors Pollee and Rose Allen
Ben Raines, a reporter for the Mobile Press-Register and a charter boat captain, had heard the stories for years. In 2017, he began searching the waters and discovered what he believed to be America’s last slave ship buried in the Mobile River mud near Twelve Mile Island. After extensive research and exploration by archaeologists and historians, in the spring of 2019 National Geographic broke the news that the Clotilda had been found.
The Heritage House
On July 8, the Africatown Heritage House opens in the historic Mobile community with the exhibit Clotilda: The Exhibition. The date marks the anniversary of the Clotilda’s return to Mobile, and the arrival of its survivors, 163 years ago.
The 2,500-square-foot museum was built by the Mobile County Commission in collaboration with the Alabama Historical Commission—which led the authentication process and now protects the Clotilda and related artifacts—and the History Museum of Mobile, which curated the exhibition and will operate Africatown Heritage House going forward.
“There’s something powerful about being in the presence of those objects,” said Dr. Meg McCrummen Fowler, director of History Museum of Mobile. “It both shows the horrors of slavery and makes the history palpable.” McCrummen Fowler insisted, however, that the multi-sensory exhibit of photos and texts remains focused on the people of Africatown.
Clotilda:The Exhibition uses early 20th century interviews of the Africatown residents and highlights the diverse languages, cultures, and religions of the community’s residents.
“It’s really so remarkable that we have those sources,” McCrummen Fowler said of the interviews.
“To have someone alive in the 20th century who remembers his life in Africa is just remarkable.”
Ellis agrees that the center of attention should remain on the 110 enslaved Africans forced to Alabama and the descendants who keep their memory alive today.
“Prior to the discovery of the Clotilda, there were descendants telling the story of the 110 slaves aboard the Clotilda and the founding of Africatown,” said Ellis, whose grandmother Beatrice Ellis was, for a time, the president of the Africatown Direct Descendants of the Clotilda. “It’s extremely important that descendants tell the story and control the narrative. And that’s what the exhibit will do.”
Ellis hopes the museum and exhibition will also bring awareness to modern-day Africatown, which has seen a decades-long decline since several industries moved in and the Bay Bridge Road cut the community in two. “It’s a community that needs revitalizing,” he said. “Justice is still needed for the crimes that were committed.”
McCrummen Fowler reiterated the fact that there is still more to learn about this history and the experience of Africatown’s founders. “Our hope is that the world’s focus on Africatown will result in tangible progress,” she said.