Nearly two centuries after the United States banned the importation of enslaved people, a Mobile-area businessman financed one final, illegal voyage across the Atlantic—and the community founded by its survivors, Africatown, still stands today just north of downtown Mobile.
According to historical accounts, Mobile shipyard owner Timothy Meaher wagered friends $100,000 that he could defy federal law and smuggle a shipload of captive Africans into Alabama. Meaher enlisted Captain William Foster to sail the schooner Clotilda, which Meaher had built in Mobile in 1856, across the Atlantic to West Africa.
Capture and a clandestine crossing
Historical records describe how, in the West African kingdom of Dahomey, the survivors of a raid on the Tarkbar village near present-day Tamale, Ghana, were sold into slavery at the port of Whydah, in what is now Benin. Foster purchased 110 captives there for $100 each and carried them across the Atlantic aboard the Clotilda, in what is recorded as the last known shipment of enslaved Africans brought to the United States.
By the time the Clotilda reached the Gulf Coast, federal authorities were already watching for the ship, having gotten word of the scheme. Foster brought the Clotilda into Mobile Bay on the night of July 9, 1860, transferred the captives to a riverboat, and had them hidden upriver in the canebrake before burning and sinking the schooner to destroy the evidence.
The captives were then divided among Meaher, his brothers Burns and James, Foster and other investors in the venture. Thirty-two of them were taken to Meaher’s property at Magazine Point, a few miles north of Mobile. A federal case, United States v. Burns Meaher, Timothy Meaher and John Dabney, charged the men with illegally importing 103 Africans for the purpose of slavery. According to court records, the case was ultimately dismissed for lack of proof directly tying Timothy Meaher to the scheme, amid the upheaval of the approaching Civil War.
From bondage to a self-built community
When the Civil War ended and the captives were freed, Timothy Meaher released the roughly 33 people he had kept for himself near Mobile. Rather than scatter, the group formed their own settlement, which became known as Africatown. For decades, residents preserved their native language, settled disputes through a tribal chieftain, Charlie Poteete, and relied on a doctor from among their own number, known as Jabez, for medical care. Africatown remained a distinct, tightly knit community in Mobile County into the World War II era.
Much of what is known about the Clotilda survivors comes from Mobile schoolteacher and illustrator Emma Langdon Roche, who interviewed several of them, including Cudjo Lewis, in the early 20th century for her book “Historic Sketches of the South.” Lewis, who died in 1934, became widely known as the last surviving Clotilda captive and was later the subject of research by anthropologist and author Zora Neale Hurston.
A living legacy
Africatown’s founders’ descendants still live in the Plateau and Magazine Point areas of Mobile, and the community’s history has drawn renewed national attention since the wreck of the Clotilda itself was confirmed in the Mobile River in 2019. Preservation efforts trace back decades, including the AfricaTown Community Mobilization Project, formed in February 1997 to establish a historic district and push for restoration of the neighborhood’s landmarks. Those efforts have continued in the years since, as the City of Mobile and community groups have worked to expand museum space, historical markers and heritage tourism centered on the Clotilda’s story.