More than fifty-three years after the U.S. outlawed importing slaves, a ship with 110 West Africans hidden in the bottom snuck into Alabama’s Mobile Bay. The Africans were sold into slavery. Evidence of the crime—a boat called Clotilda—was scuttled and burned.
Five years later, when slavery itself was finally outlawed, 32 of these West Africans returned to where they’d first landed and established Africatown. There was a church, a school, and, over the years, thriving businesses. A series of city zoning decisions in the 1960s—moving parts of the area from residential to industrial—altered Africatown’s future.
Last year, the remnants of the Clotilda were discovered, launching Africatown into the national spotlight. In this episode, we talk with Joe Womack an Africatown native and one of the co-founders of Africatown Heritage Preservation Foundation and Betsy Merrit of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. We discuss what happened to Africatown and what its future could be.
