Alabama Public Radio has been spotlighting the history of the slave ship Clotilda all throughout February for Black History Month. Africatown in the Plateau community in Mobile was established by some of the one hundred and twenty two kidnapped Africans brought over aboard the Clotilda in 1860. There’s now a new effort to use old traditions to tell the story of the last slave ship to come to America.
In Western Africa, storytellers known as “griot” or “jali” have been the keepers of history and tradition for centuries. Now a group that includes descendants of the last kidnapped Africans brought to the United States as slaves is reviving that tradition. They want to tell the story of their ancestors and the community they founded.
“One of the community elders told me to tell our story and so I took it as my responsibility to tell the whole story,” said Chief Jason Lewis. He says he wants to tell not only the story of the early community, but the struggles over generations.
“I grew up during the crack epidemic where a lot of brilliant brothers didn't get a chance to stand here and tell the story that I'm telling now, because I made it out and so it's my responsibility to come back to carry the load of the elders to take on the role of the jali, which is the bloodline of the storytelling and come back and tell a well-rounded story to the best of my ability,” said Lewis.
Lewis spent twenty four years in the military. After retiring, he almost left for good, but something made him stay.
“Returning home, I love my family, I love where I'm from but I hated some of the memories of coming from here and not until I learned the story of Africatown. The story of Africatown is what brought me back home to stay and open this business and call the Return To Africatown tour, the piece that inspired me to do this,” he said.
The Alabama Department of Tourism and Visit Mobile has been working with five groups of the descendants to form tour companies to tell the story of the Clotilda and the community.
“Just bringing it out of them. It's already there and so it's just to cultivate the gift that they already have to tell the truth about Africatown and Plateau and Happy Hills,” Michelle Browder. She’s been leading civil rights trail tours in Montgomery for about eight years. She’s been working with Africatown residents to tell their stories.
“More so just bringing out the enthusiasm in being a griot and a storyteller and experience giver. We don't like to call them guides, because it's too commercialized and commodified, so we just say that they're giving transformative experiences to people who are coming here,” she added.
“I think it's very important that we have the authentic stories being told by the authentic people, said Rosemary Junkins, civil rights and cultural tourism director for Alabama Department of Tourism. She says having people who have lived the story can be as important as the story being told.
“I think that's what's people are looking for, said Junkins. “To sugarcoat it is not what people are looking for anymore. They want the truth. People want to experience the history of what they've heard about up close and to be able to close and to be able to come to the grounds of where these people lived and the descendants of the people who were from that ship to tell their stories. I think that is a great way to experience the history up close. When people would come in, we wanted to present something that wasn't necessarily what we call a cookie-cutter style tour, so to immerse them or to do a deep dive with individuals who were a part of the history makes that tour even better. Having someone who was there tell the story, so that's what we worked on. We wanted to gather people who knew the history from a different perspective and that's what we've done and I think that's why it's been so successful and doing that very same thing here in Africatown, people are going to want to come.
Joycelyn Davis has been active in the Clotilda Descendants Association. She also helped produce the movie “Descendants” about the Africatown story. However, Davis was reluctant to take part in the tour groups. She says working with Junkins changed her mind.
“She talked about the tours in Montgomery and all those things and what could be in Africatown and I still wasn't sold on it until she said Jocelyn you can do this,” Davis recalled. “She was speaking life into me and she said well I tell you what. I want you to come to Montgomery and meet Michelle Browder.”
Davis is a descendant of Clotilda captive Oluale. He later became known by the name Charlie Lewis. Davis says she wants to use her family’s history to tell people about the experiences of those brought over into slavery and their descendants. While the Clotilda expedition was said to be financed by Mobilian Timothy Meaher, Davis says many others took part in the plan.
“What I like to share is the Meaher families were not the only ones involved,” Davis stated. “There were some other men that were at the table when this quote/unquote bet was made and my ancestor was enslaved by a person named Colonel Thomas Beauford, who had the Beauford plantation here in Mobile and when you growing up, you don't think about plantations, but they were here in Mobile. So, my ancestor bought land from Col. Thomas Beauford and started Lewis's Quarters and I want to tell the story about my mother saying we're going to the quarters. We're going to the Quarters to see her grandmother, who was my great-grandmother and we would go there every Saturday and my grandmother lived here, her brother lived here, her sister lived there and everybody lived around each other, but I thought that was common, but it was uncommon for everybody to live together in a cul-de-sac.”
Lamar Howard who sometimes is called "Plateau Black" is also starting a tour group. He says he wants to tell how the community’s struggles are still going on.
“When I start off with mine, I start off where the Clotilda landing is. That's the original place where the Clotilda ship is supposed to have landed and it didn't land there because that's where the federal authorities were waiting on them, so that's where I want to start from, the Clotilda landing and bring them into the neighborhood and show them the rich history about Mobile County Training School and the Lewis Quarters and all the history that's around Plateau and even some of the bad history when we had International Paper Mill and Scott Paper and all the pollution is and everything,” he said.
I've really super excited because this is the start of something very international,” said David Clark, director of Visit Mobile. He says the tours and interest in Africatown will help not only the community, but the region and beyond.
“This is not just a national story,” Clark said. “Rosemary, our teams, we travel international to tell this story and people from all over the world are going to come see it. I think that once the assets are fully built out of Africatown, it's probably 1 million visitors a year to come check this out so we're super excited.”
While the tours might provide an economic benefit, the real benefit is preserving and spreading that story. Again, Michelle Browder.
“Absolutely, in every culture, it's about telling the story and so if we don't tell these narratives, it gets lost and therefore you lose your culture. You lose the very essence of who we are as a people so important for them to pass it along for the next generation,” she said.
