POWERGRAMS

Clotilda slave ship survivors' 20 Since its discovery in the Mobile River in 2019, the Clotilda, the sunken schooner oen known as the "last American slave ship," has gained worldwide attention. But Darron Patterson said the story is not about the ship. "e Clotilda was nothing but a floating dungeon," said Patterson, president of the Clotilda Descendants Association. "e story is about the people in the cargo hold who endured a journey of two months. ey were chained together; they were buck naked; they ate and slept where they went to the bathroom. eir captors tried to break them, but they didn't break, and that's the real story." Patterson's great-great-grandfather, Pollee Allen, was among the 110 west Africans who were forcibly captured from their homes and taken aboard that ship as slaves to a strange land an ocean away. Despite enduring untold miseries, these people survived and later founded Africatown, a community that still remains in Mobile. It's there that the Africans handed down their native language, customs and cultural traditions to their children and grandchildren. e nearly forgotten story of these survivors and the ship that delivered them to America will be the centerpiece of a new interactive exhibit housed in the Africatown Heritage House, which is set to open this winter. e History Museum of Mobile, in partnership with the Alabama Historical Commission, has been working for three years to develop, create and construct "Clotilda: the Exhibition." "e exhibition will be a central, physical location for locals and tourists alike to learn about the important details of this story," said Meg Fowler, director of the History Museum of Mobile. "Although the exhibit space is not large, it is a rich, densely packed space that will tell the story from the beginning, focusing on the origins of the west African people and their culture, and continuing through the last voyage of the Clotilda."' e Alabama Power Foundation provided support for this project. In 2020, the foundation presented a grant that is still being used to help fund the development of the exhibit, Fowler said. "We are so grateful for the support from the Alabama Power Foundation," she said. "It has allowed us to construct the exhibit to the highest curatorial standards, thus making it possible for us to tell the story to visitors in a powerful, meaningful way." The final journey In 1860, two co-conspirators, Tim Meaher and Capt. William Foster, bet that they could bring African captives into the United States, although the slave trade had been outlawed for more than 50 years. Under the cover of night, the Clotilda slipped into Mobile Bay with 110 kidnapped Africans, becoming the nation's last known slave ship. Meaher and Foster then burned and scuttled the ship in an effort to dispose of the evidence. It was a "gut-wrenching" story, Fowler said. "When they were captured, the people had no idea what was happening to them," she said. "ey were taken to this port city and sold indiscriminately without regard to family groups. ey didn't speak the same language; they didn't practice the same religion; and they came from a different culture." Yet, those Clotilda captives survived slavery and the Civil War. When they received their freedom at the end of the war five years later, they brought a piece of their homeland to Mobile, with the establishment of Africatown. Many Africatown residents today can trace their ancestry directly to those Clotilda survivors. HISTORY Meg Fowler, director, History Museum of Mobile Architect's rendering of completed museum. PHOTO BY DAN ANDERSON

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