(somber piano music) ♪ There's a motion in my boat ♪ ♪ And it's moving this ashore ♪ - He would point to his left, and he would say that that ship is still over there.

- The heritage house was an answer to a problem.

- But if we're gonna tell the story, we must remind those in attendance today of their bravery, their resiliency, how they founded Africatown.

♪ Moving to a place ♪ ♪ Beyond the bay ♪ - Hello, I'm Veda Robbins.

- And I'm Randy Scott.

- Welcome to the Africatown Heritage House Museum in Mobile.

Located in a historic Africatown community, this facility honors the legacy of the 110 enslaved Africans brought to the United States aboard the slave ship Clotilda.

- Their arrival in 1860 marked the last slave ship coming to this country at a time when America's original sin was about to plunge this nation into civil war.

While their story played out in Alabama, it began an ocean away following a bet made by Mobilian Timothy Meaher, a riverboat captain who waged that he could outrun federal gunboats and deliver slaves to this country.

- The Clotilda made its way across the Atlantic to the kingdom of Dahomey, now known as Benin.

That is where the human cargo was purchased and loaded into the hold for the voyage back to Alabama.

Sneaking by federal patrols under the cover of darkness, the Clotilda arrived at Twelve Mile Island on the Mobile River and offloaded the Africans onto land owned by the Meaher family.

The then to hide the crime, the vessel was set ablaze, sinking into the muddy river bed, and was only rediscovered 158 years later.

I know this was just a camp, just a place.

But this is like a historical place, the last documented slave ship to illegally bring Africans to the United States.

- A tough topic for some to talk about even today.

- Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

It's never been tough for us to talk about, though.

We have always wanted to make sure people knew about it.

It's just important for people to know.

I think it's important to be known so the family and the history of it is not off the hook.

Like they will never be off the hook for this.

Their names will always be, they will live in infamy, and I think that's part of making sure this story is told, to make sure that name forever lives in infamy.

- [Randy] For Veda, this story is personal.

A descendant of the 110 enslaved Africans, the story of the Clotilda is as familiar as her mother's cooking.

- This part of the story is something that was always talked about in our family, just not something that we talked about as this is history, sit down, let's learn these facts.

It was never that.

It's the same as if somebody told you about Grandma was a teacher, and so you just grew up knowing grandma was a teacher.

And then years later you found out grandma was the first teacher to do this huge thing that changed the world, and now you're like, "Oh, that was really important."

So that's how this was.

It's just something that we were just, we just always talked about but never talked about in terms of something enormous.

So I grew up knowing this, and I didn't really know this part of the story until the ship was found.

- The discovery of the burned-out wreckage confirmed what she had been told as a child, that the oral legacy passed down from generations was not fiction, but fact.

When it was found, the Matilda in 2019, after years of saying, "It's there, it's there, it's there," and then all of a sudden here it is.

- Mm-hmm.

- Was that a watershed moment, do you think, with this particular story?

- It was for a lot of people, but for the descendants, I'm speaking for myself, but I've heard other descendants say this.

So it's for you all.

It's for everybody else.

Like we already knew.

We already told you it was here, so you needed to know it.

Now you know it.

Now you can see it.

Now experts have told you.

Can we move on now?

That's how a lot of us felt.

We already knew it was there, but you know, for it to be (gentle music) local folklore or mythology, because they just didn't want to accept that one of their own did this.

So we just pretended that it didn't happen.

But we always knew it happened.

Our parents told us and we believed it.

- [Randy] But as she and other descendants will tell you, the story of these people doesn't end in this moss-covered section of Mobile River.

- My ancestors, my third great-grandparents, Pollee and Rose Allen were on the Clotilda.

They were two of the 32 people who founded Africatown.

So my understanding is they were two other people who, after they got out of these marshes, were enslaved for five years.

And once their enslavement ended, they got together and purchased the land that later became Africatown.

So my understanding is my ancestors were two of those people who remained here.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) I don't know where the others went.

I think they were spread out among three different...

I'm not sure about that part of the history, but they went other places.

And just 32 remained here.

Even before the discovery of the wreckage, descendants of the 110 were organizing to make sure the legacy doesn't fade away.

- For me, this is a continuation of what was instilled in me, but an opportunity for us to now invite the community of Mobile.

Well, the community of Mobile is an opportunity for us to invite those in the state of Alabama, but the world, right, the world to come and learn about our ancestors, who they were as individuals.

What's important to me is also the stories of those 110 survivors, the story of those individual families, learn about each of those individuals and learn about the resiliency of who they were as individuals, as Americans, as Africans and just a continuation.

- [Veda] Jeremy Ellis is president of the Clotilda Descendants Association.

- Let's not forget (drowned out by voiceover) - [Veda] His passion is for preserving the legacy of the one 10 for future generations.

- Let's remember the fear and disorientation of being in a foreign land with a foreign language.

But if we're gonna tell the story, we must remind those in attendance today of their bravery, their resiliency, how they founded Africatown - [Veda] Ellis sees the Heritage House as key for the economic and cultural revival of the Africatown community.

- This is also an opportunity for us to not only tell the story of our ancestors, but also allow for our story to shed light on a community that really has experienced some of its own challenges, and for us to figure out how do we tell the story of the 110, but also uplift the community and allow the community to have a voice for some of the challenges and some of the things that they would like to see implemented in Africatown today.

- [Veda] Those experiences are much more than what has been the traditional conversation of about the practice of enslaving Africans for profit in the Western hemisphere.

- Oftentimes, when the narrative is told, it begins with either the actual transatlantic slave trade, or the arrival of survivors.

In this particular story, we had an opportunity to learn about them pre their arrival, because what we do know is that many of them had lives and had careers and had occupations prior to being captured in the barracoon or placed in the barracoon, and they have been sold to Captain William Foster - [Veda] Ellis, like many others in the Africatown community, also recognizes the timeliness of the Heritage House to educate current and future generations.

- To everything there is a season and a time and a purpose under the sun.

For Clotilda, the exhibit, to be happening at a time where history is being rewritten, where history is being stripped away in school systems, where it's essentially being rewritten, it's important that we, as memory keepers, tell the narrative of what our ancestors experienced and what they went through on July the eighth, 1860, on (indistinct) committee.

(energetic drum music) Through all of the turbulence and everything that's happening in this landscape, for us to be opening an exhibit during this time, a critical moment in American history where history was made in 1860 (gentle music) with the last slave ship, the last-known slave ship, to arrive is critical, but it's also an opportunity for us descendants to continue that narrative and to tell that story.

And that's what, as the motto goes, never let the world forget.

And that's what we get an opportunity to do, as descendants and as keepers of this story.

- [Randy] Over several decades, grassroots organizations have evolved to keep the story alive.

One of them, the Clotilda Descendants Association, has begun collecting oral histories from those descendants.

Some who learned the saga from parents and grandparents, while others gained knowledge and perspective in recent years.

- Well, when my father sat us down and talked to us, one thing he would say to us, he would say, "Repeat after me: Clotilda."

And we would repeat after him "Clotilda," and he would point to his left and he would say that that ship is still over there.

They ain't found it, but the ship is still over there.

By them not finding that ship, they saying it didn't happen.

So he would tell us to not to forget.

So as we kept going on and kept saying the ship over there, it's not like we lying, because they found it.

If we would just be quiet and never said anything about the ship, then they would let it go on and say is a myth.

So it was important to him that we know our history so maybe one day it would come out, and it did.

- [Randy] What was your reaction when you found out about that?

- My initial reaction was anger, really.

I think the part that got me, I know a lot, (gentle music) I know a little bit about slavery and how people had been brought from Africa through this country, but I guess it never had really dawned on me, though I knew grandmother was from Africa.

But looking at when she would've come here, I didn't realize that she had come as a slave, believe that or not, that was just my reaction, especially having a little bit of my knowledge of history and realizing that slavery had been outlawed, what, two some, what, 1908 or somewhere there.

And that my grandmother had to have come either around the Civil War, but you know, around that time.

So, but to think about her and the other 109 being in those conditions, that really was my initial reaction.

Matter of fact, it took me a little while to just sit back and think about it.

And, you know, you run it through your mind, and I said, well, you know, if grandmother had not undergone what she did, I wouldn't be here.

- My ancestor, Lottie Dennison, or Kanko, never lived in Africatown, but lived here in Mobile and maintained a relationship with the people in Africatown.

And she was the smallest one of them, as my great aunt, who wrote a memoir about her grandmother.

One of our family tales suggest that once a constable came to the family home, and she did not like whatever it was that he confronted her about, and supposedly in a frame that was very small, maybe she was five feet tall, she supposedly picked the constable up and threw him back over the fence.

And when she met with some of the other ancestors on Sundays after church, they often talked about how strong she was.

She could work like a man.

She's the one that we have records of her receiving receipts.

What I don't know is whether other people signed her name or if she signed her name, but places where it said signed by, her name appeared on those receipts.

(gentle music) So she had a real strong business sense.

- We had fond memories of growing up in Africatown.

And by the way, I was even beyond Africatown.

I was born, and the first four years of my life spent in the New Quarters.

New Quarters so named because it was euphemism for the new slave quarters.

- Mm-hmm.

- We lived in shotgun homes.

Shotgun got the name because if you fire a shotgun for the front door, you go always through the back and not hit a thing.

So there's a row of two streets of shotgun homes, shotgun homes on both sides of the road.

And it's my contention, my belief, that was one of perhaps the first landing spots for the freed Africans.

And the reason I suspect that is because it was close enough to the paper mills so that they could walk there.

- Mm-hmm.

- And it was also property still owned by the Maeher family.

- Okay.

- So the height of irony, (gentle music) 100 years after the landing, my father, Fred Green Sr., the grandson of Ossa and Anna Keeby who were brought over on the Clotilda, was still paying rent to Augustus August Maeher, the grandson of Timothy Maeher, who commissioned the trip.

- [Randy] Confirmation that the wreckage had been found spurred efforts to honor the 110.

That interest jump-started a local movement to make the linkage more tangible.

Instead of erecting a another historic marker or simply renaming a street, community leaders agreed that a permanent museum and educational center was needed to carry the story forward.

(Merceria speaking faintly) - So the Heritage House was an answer to a problem.

The problem was we had artifacts from the ship from that first dive, and the community said we want this to be able to be displayed, and we want it to be able to be displayed inside Africatown.

- Good morning everyone.

This regular meeting of the Mobile County Commission is now called to order.

- [Randy] Mobile County Commissioner Merceria Ludgood's district includes Africatown.

She, along with the county's legislative delegation, used a lot of political capital to galvanize community and financial supports to create the space.

- Well, there were no options because you need special facilities because of the the fragility of the parts from the ship.

And so the idea of Africatown Heritage House was to create a space inside the community that was properly built and designed to be able to handle those artifacts.

So nobody wants to do an exhibition that has like two tanks of ship parts.

And so the next phase, well, we don't wanna do it just like that.

We need to tell a complete story because the the ship (gentle music) is incidental to the story of what the people did.

And so we need to be able to tell the story that the ship is a part of the story but to tell the entire Africatown story.

- [Randy] Ludgood emphasizes that making the Heritage House a reality is not a one-and-done process.

- Heritage House is the beginning.

It's not the end-all, be-all.

It's a modest facility.

It's really important, I think, to all of us who've been involved with it.

But we know that we need a whole lot more, but this is where we start.

- [Randy] A start that addresses some unspoken and uncomfortable truths of American history.

- I think all of us, not just African Americans in this country, but everyone in this country ought to be saying "I wanna know my complete history."

I want to know the whole story, the good, the bad, the ugly.

Because what I want is when I look forward, I wanna look forward to a to a future that does not repeat the mistakes that we made in the past.

The ones that we are seeing play out in our country, in our world, every day right now (gentle music) - [Veda] How can this relatively small facility that is off the beaten track have a lasting impact?

- So important that this exhibition is in the community to the story, that where the story belongs, and that community members and descendants are able to access and have ownership of it right there in the heart of the historic Africatown community.

- [Veda] For Meg Fowler, the Heritage House project (Meg speaking faintly) is an opportunity to create an accurate and honest portrayal of the legacy of the 110.

A key to that process is the opportunity to exhibit artifacts from the wreckage of the Clotilda, which had been submerged for more than a century.

- So the objects are on loan from the Alabama Historical Commission.

They are the state preservation agency that are the stewards for, among other things, things that are found in state waters.

So they have loaned the pieces of the shipwreck that they have recovered from the site in the Mobile River, and each piece that they've recovered tells part of the story that proves that this was in fact the Clotilda.

So each piece, whether it's the composition of the wood or of the iron or the way that you can tell that a piece of wood was burned, each piece tells part of the story and confirms that this wreck is in fact the Clotilda.

- [Veda] Yeah.

It's so amazing that after all these years that these pieces were able to be salvaged looking at wood that actually came from the Clotilda that people thought were lost for so many years.

- There's something really powerful about being right here in the presence of these objects.

And that's something that I think will be really powerful for visitors to this exhibition, to have that tangible connection to this history is, it's astonishing.

- [Veda] But pieces of the wreckage are only part of the story of the Africans who settled in this remote section of Mobile.

- There are also artifacts that descendants have given on loan: land deeds, we've gotten marriage licenses from probate court, there are records of city property tax.

Each of those tell a part of the story.

Those objects tell the story of how the community set down roots of people who chose to marry, thinking about family as this act of resistance and resilience, creating family setting down roots, buying land, talk a lot about how important it was to acquire land, how family groups came together to purchase that land.

And then we have tangible records that show from our municipal court systems how that happened.

(gentle music) - [Veda] Since much of the material is from what archive is considered to be a relatively modern source, the exhibit has a unique distinction.

- This is one of the best documented middle passage voyages.

There are so many primary sources and wherever possible we have let the voices of the the people who experienced it, those primary sources be the voices that shine through, not our voices.

They would have potentially touched these, seen them, been physically in proximity, and that is a really powerful, tangible connection.

- It is.

And it's amazing how intact these pieces are after all these years, so that's the part that gives me, is just being able to touch the same pieces that my ancestors probably touched.

Those memories passed down over several years resonate today with the new generation committed to preserving a legacy.

- And it reminds us that the lives of 110 African men women and children, they're not remote and distant.

They are present, they are very much still with us.

And we know that, I mean in a really powerful way.

This history is very present.

This is not the past.

This is the present.

- Thank you for joining us on this journey.

It's been a pleasure having you here.

I hope you learned something here.

Make sure to visit the Africatown Heritage House and to learn as much as you can about your history.

Talk to your parents, talk to your family, and follow us in all the things that we're doing in Africatown to see how the history moves us into the future.

- That's right, because history is a big part of this state.

And this state is known for its history and pride in its history.

But Veda, I'm sure you can tell people why it's important to know history and how it affects not only the people here in this area the people all over this state and all over this country, from your perspective.

- Mm-hmm.

This history is worldwide.

It's history we've known for all this time, but now the world has their eyes on Africatown.

So it's important to get to know the descendants of the Clotilda, and get to know the community of Africatown.

- We hope that you've gotten some valuable lessons with this and giving you a spark to want to go further and do some more studying in the history of this state and of this country.

Thank you for joining us.

(energetic drum music) (people chattering) - [Group] Amy Greenwood Phillips.

- [Performer] JB Shade.

- Unknown.

- Polly Shade.

- (indistinct) Smith.

- Unknown.

- [Performer] Jenny Smith.

- [Performer] Redoshi, Sally Smith.

Yawith, William Smith.

Anthony Thomas.

- Unknown.

- Archie Thomas.

- Unknown.

- [Performer] Abacha, Clara Turner.

(indistinct) Sarah Walker.

- Shamba.

- Shamba Wigfall.

- Adissa Brunsford-Wigfall.

Allie Williams.

- [Group] Unknown, unknown.

- [Performer] Unknown.