Africatown, also known as AfricaTown USA and Plateau, is a historic community located three miles north of downtown Mobile, Alabama. It was formed by a group of 32 West Africans, who in 1860 were included in the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the United States. 110 enslaved people held by the Kingdom of Dahomey were smuggled into Mobile on the Clotilda, which was burned and scuttled to try to conceal its illicit cargo.
About Africatown in brief
Africatown, also known as AfricaTown USA and Plateau, is a historic community located three miles north of downtown Mobile, Alabama. It was formed by a group of 32 West Africans, who in 1860 were included in the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the United States. 110 enslaved people held by the Kingdom of Dahomey were smuggled into Mobile on the Clotilda, which was burned and scuttled to try to conceal its illicit cargo. More than 30 of these people, believed to be ethnic Yoruba and Fon, founded and created their own community in what became Africatown. In the early 21st century, the community has about 2,000 residents. It is estimated 100 of them are descendants of the people from the clotilda. Other descendants live across the country. In 2009, the neighborhood was designated as a site on Mobile’s African American Heritage Trail. In 2019, scholar Hannah Durkin from Newcastle University documented Redoshi, a West African woman who was believed at the time to be the last survivor of slaves from the ClOTilda. She lived to 1937. The Africatown Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. It has been given a large historical plaque telling its history. The population of Africatown has declined markedly from a peak population of 12,000 in the 20th century, when paper mills operated there. In early July 1860, the captain of the Cl Totilda entered Mobile Bay and approached the port of Mobile. Trying to evade discovery, Captain William Foster had the ship towed at night upriver beyond the port.
He sent the slaves onto a riverboat and loaded it on to a steamboat. The Africans were mostly distributed as slaves among the parties who had invested in the venture. Before being taken from Mobile, they were invested in their own terms of surviving. They built shelters of whatever they found in the Alabamalands, and adapted their hunting to the rich game. Some slaves were sold to more distant areas. Among them were Redoshi and her husband, Selma Smith, who later founded the Bank of Selma and later became a man who lived in Washington, Alabama, and later sold to Washington Smith of Dallas County. The ship sailed in May 1860 from DahomeY for its final destination, Mobile, with 110 persons held as slaves. The captives were said to be mostly of the \”Tarkbar\” tribe, but research in the 21st Century suggests that they were Takpa people, a band of Yoruba people from present-day Nigeria. The captured people were sold for USD 100 each to Foster, who bought the slaves and loaded them. He had paid for 125 slaves, but as he was preparing for departure, he saw steamers offshore and rapidly departed to evade them. The slave traders bet each other and a groups of men from New England that they could evade federal authorities. The Atlantic slave trade had been prohibited by the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, although the domestic slave trade continued.
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This page is based on the article Africatown published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
