National attention returns to one of Mobile’s most storied historic sites this weekend, as the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” prepares to air a segment on the schooner Clotilda — the vessel that carried the last known group of enslaved Africans to America in 1860, in defiance of federal law. The episode is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 29, and will revisit both the illegal voyage and the remarkable community its survivors built afterward.
After the captives were smuggled ashore, the ship’s owners scuttled the Clotilda upriver from Mobile to hide evidence of their crime. Many of those who survived the crossing eventually settled north of the city limits in what became Africatown, a community founded and sustained by African-born Americans.
State Funding Launches New Phase of Work on the Wreck
The segment arrives as preservation work enters an ambitious new stage. According to a July release from the Alabama Historical Commission, the state has appropriated $1 million to launch Phase 3 of the effort to protect the wreck, which was located and confirmed in recent years in the Mobile River.
The new phase includes targeted artifact excavation supported by industrial dive operations. An environmental study will examine sediment around the site, water movement and the species living near the wreck. A structural assessment will gauge how much the timbers have deteriorated and shape a long-term preservation plan, while an engineering study will evaluate riverbed integrity and site protection ahead of a possible on-site memorial.
The fragility of the remains has been documented before: a May 2019 report described the wreck as fragile, noting that its owners tried to destroy it to conceal their human trafficking crimes — and that local lore holds it was dynamited sometime in the mid-20th century, either during a salvage attempt or to finish the job of erasing it.
Heritage House Takes Shape Downtown and in Africatown
Preservation leaders are also working to tell the story on land. Mobile County, the city of Mobile, the Alabama Historical Commission, the History Museum of Mobile and the Africatown Advisory Council are partnering to create and curate the Africatown Heritage House, which will recount the Clotilda saga and display artifacts connected to it.
Momentum for the exhibition project got a financial boost shortly before airtime: on Nov. 10, the Alabama Power Foundation presented a grant to the History Museum of Mobile to support development of “Clotilda: The Exhibition.”
With the national broadcast, state funding and museum plans converging, Africatown’s long fight to preserve the physical evidence of its founding story is entering its most visible chapter yet.