NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 87NATALIE S. ROBERTSON, Ph.D.
AUTHOR OF THE SLAVE SHIP CLOTILDA AND THE MAKING OF AFRICATOWN, U.S.A.,
ROBERTSON IS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR (ADJUNCT) AT HAMPTON UNIVERSITY IN VIRGINIA.Mobile. They worked and lived on these farms
as the Civil War raged on. After the Confederacy
lost and slavery was subsequently abolished,
many of the newly freed longed to return home
to West Africa, but they lacked the means.
Rather than succumb, more than 30 members
of the Clotilda cargo purchased land north of
Mobile, Alabama, to start their own homes. His-
torical records bear their names: Cudjo, Charlee,
Polee, Gumpa, Jaba, Kanko, Zuma, and Abackey.
They and their shipmates drew on their West
African culture, expertise, and technical skills
to build their own community, which became
known as Africatown.
With a determination to overcome their or-
deal, the Clotilda Africans constructed vernacu-
lar houses with adjacent gardens whose crops
thrived based upon the agricultural acumen of
their West African cultivators. An African-
influenced work ethic, a communal lifestyle, and
an age-grade system of governance sustained
Africatown’s residents for generations.
Tales of the Clotilda voyage were passed
down to descendants to keep the story alive
despite denials from Mobile’s former slave-
holders. One hundred fifty-nine years after
her transatlantic voyage, the discovery of the
Clotilda’s wreckage has validated the stories
of the ancestors.
Globally, the oceans and the riverbeds sing
the dirges of millions of Africans who per-
ished during the Middle Passage. After the
United States banned the international slave
trade, Meaher and Foster defied the law and
got away with the crime of smuggling people
from Africa. The Clotilda captives’ survival,
both of the Middle Passage and slavery itself,
is prima facie evidence of a crime. The Clo-
tilda’s wreckage corroborates her captives’
victimization in the 19th century. The exis-
tence of Africatown validates the legacy and
resilience of the primarily Yoruba-speaking
Africans whose ancestry and legacy shine
through the lives of their descendants.THE CLOTILDA’S ARRIVAL in Alabama occurred
in great secrecy. Both Meaher and Foster
knew discovery of their venture meant
death, so they took precautions to avoid
detection by federal authorities. After the
Clotilda arrived in the waters of Alabama in
early July 1860, Foster went ashore to alert
Meaher of their arrival and then returned
to his ship. Meaher boarded a tugboat,
Billy Jones, which traveled down the Span-
ish river to meet the schooner. The Clotilda
was tied to the tugboat, which pulled her
silently upriver where it met a steamship,
the Czar, helmed by Meaher’s brother
Byrne. The African captives were transferred
from the dark hold of the schooner to the
waiting Czar, which took them to land. They
were given ragged clothes and hidden in the
tall, tangled canebrake along the river to
avoid detection by any federal authorities.
The captives would be enslaved until 1865,
when the 13th Amendment ended slavery.ARRIVAL
IN ALABAMA
JASON TREAT AND KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI, NG STAFF. ART: THOM TENERY