Africatown: The Community Founded by Survivors of the Last Illegal Slave Ship to the US

In 1860, Alabama planter Timothy Meaher commissioned the schooner Clotilda to smuggle enslaved Africans into the United States, defying the 1807 federal ban. Captain William Foster sailed to the Kingdom of Dahomey in present-day Benin, purchasing 110 people captured during regional wars. After a brutal two-month Atlantic crossing where five captives died, Foster offloaded 105 survivors into Mobile Bay's swamps under cover of darkness, then burned and sank the ship to conceal evidence. The captives were enslaved around Mobile until emancipation in 1865. Pooling their resources, the survivors later purchased land from the Meaher family north of Mobile, establishing Africatown. There they preserved African languages, customs, and oral histories, including the story of their abduction. For decades, local families like the Meahers denied the Clotilda's existence, but survivor Cudjo Lewis shared his account with writer Zora Neale Hurston, whose book Barracoon was published in 2018. In 2019, the ship's wreckage was discovered in the Mobile River, confirming the community's oral history. Africatown now faces environmental challenges from local industry, while descendants continue to uphold their ancestors' traditions. The wreck is protected under federal law, and a heritage museum tells the story.