New museum in Alabama tells history of last known slave ship to US and its survivors
A new museum Alabama tells the history of the Clotilda — the last ship known to transport Africans to the American South for enslavement MOBILE, Ala. -- A museum that tells the history of the Clotilda — the last ship known to transport Africans to the American South for enslavement — opened Saturday, exactly 163 years after the vessel arrived in Alabama's Mobile Bay. Ceremonies dedicating the $1.3 million Africatown Heritage House and “Clotilda: The Exhibition” took place Friday and Saturday in Mobile. The exhibit tells about the ship, its survivor s and how they founded Africatown community in Mobile after they were freed from five years of slave ry following the Civil War. The Clotilda departed Alabama in 1860, more than 50 years after Congress outlawed the importation of additional en slave d people, on a clandestine trip funded by Timothy Meaher, whose descendants still own millions of dollars worth of land around Mobile. The Clotilda illegally transported 110 captive people f...