Explore the Africatown Heritage House in Mobile, Alabama

At the Africatown Heritage House in Mobile, Alabama, a new exhibition tells fresh stories about the African American experience.

In the summer of 1860, America’s last known slave ship smuggled 110 West African captives into Alabama, 52 years after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved people.

After unloading passengers along the Mobile River, the sailors burned and sank the ship, called Clotilda, to erase evidence of this unlawful act.

This summer, four years after archaeologists identified the ship’s water-logged remains, the Africatown Heritage House in Mobile unveils Clotilda: The Exhibition. The 2500-sq-ft display examines a chilling chapter of American history while celebrating Africatown, a resilient community established by Clotilda’s passengers in the wake of the Civil War.

“I want Africatown Heritage House to be the Plymouth Rock for Black people,” stated Jessica Fairley, the facility’s manager. “I want people from all over the world to be able to come here, place their hands on the glass (which will encase remnants of the Clotilda) and connect with their ancestors.”

Thousands of ships participated in the transatlantic slave trade between 1600 and 1860, forcing over 388,000 Africans into bondage on the US mainland. However, few slave wrecks have been uncovered, and African American ancestry often remains shrouded in mystery. Consequently, remnants of Clotilda and tales from Africatown will help visitors fill in some missing pieces.

From Clotilda to Africatown

The story of Clotilda starts with Timothy Meaher, a Mobile landowner and businessman who bet he could bring human cargo into Mobile Bay without being caught by authorities. The ship he financed was helmed by William Foster, who sailed to present-day Benin, West Africa, and purchased 110 men, women, and children for $9000 in gold – a small fraction of what Meaher would recoup upon selling the captives in America. (Meaher and Foster were never punished for their crimes.)

“We all lonesome for our home,” recalled Cudjo Lewis, a victim of Clotilda, who recounted the ship’s journey to author Zora Neale Hurston in 1927. (Hurston recorded Lewis in his authentic dialect.) “We doan know whut goin’ become of us, we doan want to be put apart from one’ nother.”

After a treacherous six-week Atlantic crossing, some captives stayed in Mobile, enslaved by the Meaher family, while others were sold to nearby Alabama plantations.

When slavery was abolished in 1865, the survivors of Clotilda dreamed of returning to Africa but lacked the means to get there. Instead, the group pooled money to purchase small plots of land north of Mobile and created Africatown, an independent community where they maintained their African identities. Many of their descendants still live in Africatown, raised on stories of the sunken slave ship and its passengers.

Clotilda: The Exhibition

Thanks to a wealth of firsthand accounts passed down from Cudjo Lewis and his contemporaries, Clotilda’s journey is one of the best-recorded slave voyages in American history. The Africatown Heritage House will center the stories of the 110 survivors with interpretive text panels, documents, artifacts, and even pieces of the ship.

“You’ll come in and see what these people were able to do after they were taken away from their homes and put in a place unknown to them,” said Fairley. “I don’t know what my ancestors went through, but knowing what the survivors of the Clotilda went through gives me a piece of my story.”

The exhibit opened to the public on July 8.

Rethinking the American Narrative

Africatown Heritage House, a new site constructed by the Mobile County Commission and the City of Mobile, joins a growing movement that reconsiders US history through the lens of Black Americans.

In 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, became the first national museum devoted exclusively to documenting the lives of African Americans. Furthermore, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, was the first of its kind, commemorating victims of lynching in the United States. Recently, the International African American Museum opened in Charleston, South Carolina, marking a significant addition to the representation of African American experiences.

These museums compel visitors to confront America’s inequitable past while forging a blueprint for a better tomorrow.

“The story of the Clotilda was not a ‘myth’ or a ‘legend’ as it was often referred to by some, but an existing history that was historically neglected in the dominant American narrative,” said documentary film director Margaret Brown. Her film, Descendant, explores Africatown’s fight for justice.

Now, with museums like Africatown Heritage House taking the spotlight, stories from individuals like Cudjo Lewis can finally receive the recognition they deserve.