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What the Discovery of the Last American Slave Ship Means to Descendants | National Geographic


4m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] I was born in this four-room house right next to the Union Baptist Church in Plateau Mobile, Alabama. [Music] In this house, my grandmother had taught us a whole lot about this history, but me being a little girl, I didn't know that this history wasn't as important as it is. They wanted us to remember that our family came over on the Clotilda, the last slave ship. [Music] They made a bet down on the Mobile docks that they could bring this ship unseen and unheard because they knew it was illegal. It was a racist deed that victimized 111 people from Benin and brought them here with the intent of enslaving them. [Music] They wanted to make sure nobody's name was connected, so when they burnt that ship, they said no parts of it were left.

[Music] There's a very powerful descended community right here in Mobile, Alabama, called Africatown, just like our ancestors were rooted. And as we think about how our ancestors here in America, a lot of them lived off of the water, they're trying to reclaim a memory and reclaim identity and reclaim culture that was stolen from them. You had individuals transported against their will to this land, and they had a foresighted vision to start a church, a community, and a school. What more can you ask? They started Africatown with a meek and humble beginning. They wanted to make this their Africa; they wanted everything right here. [Music]

This community, at one time, was self-sustaining. It had barber shops, grocery stores, cleaners—everything that you needed. We had fruit trees everywhere. Everybody had chickens and gardens. There was always something cooked at somebody's house, and they cooked on wood stoves. Africatown was family; everyone looked out for each other. It was a place where we had pride. [Music]

When I start to talk about Africatown, sometimes I get a little emotional because it's nothing like when I grew up. Up until the late 50s, Africatown was its own incorporated area, but Mobile began to court Africatown. In the 60s, the city rezoned from residential to heavy industry because they wanted to get those taxes from those industries. So I can understand people in the area feeling as if they have been forgotten because they would just like to bulldoze everything in here, move these 2,000 people out, and just industrialize the rest of it. They figure if they ignore you and just let your house burn down, your people die off, and buy off your land, then that's what they'll do. So [Music]

[Applause] [Music] Alright. [Music] [Music] When I first came to Africatown, I met the congregation. I found out that just about every family had someone that they knew or was affected by cancer. Most of the people who were sick had been the ones that were playing in this soot, in this ash that was falling from the smokestacks of the industry around. When you look around, it's dilapidated homes. No one has put any dollars to open up a store; that's why the hope is gone. There's been economic tragedies; there's been environmental tragedies to a horrific extent. But there are folks who are holding on. Now, after they're able to go down and find parts of that ship, maybe now it'll be documented as the last slave ship.

This mission is about, again, doing a comprehensive search of all the vessels that are in the stretch of the river. And if by chance we run across something of interest, that would be great: six-inch iron spike, and that was on the wood. Okay, okay. Are you going down? Are you going up? Okay, feels all wood. [Music]

Identifying a shipwreck is a difficult business. We look at what the craftsmanship suggests to us. [Music] There's one target in particular that stands out. It's roughly the same size as Clotilda: 86 feet long and 23 feet wide. According to its registration documents, frames of oak, as well as planks of southern yellow pine, fasteners all made of iron. We haven't seen a single fastener yet made of copper or brass. [Music]

We've got a ship of the right size and what we think is the right place. At this stage where we're at, this could be Clotilda. [Music] The vessel is located; it's going to be a very powerful artifact to help us tell the story. We think that would be one of the most historic finds in America, not just in Africa. The whole story becomes life and becomes true; it starts a new chapter. You know, from their perspective, it can present many opportunities for the community to rebuild it, to give it its prominence. And we'll have the proof that we need to know that we were part of the history of Mobile. We need to tell it; we need to share it; we need to expose it to the world. If you people will listen to me from my heart, I prayed, I knew that I would. [Music]

[Applause] We are America's greatest. [Applause] [Music] You.

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