The exact moment the Africatown Heritage House opens to the public happens utterly without fanfare.

There are no speeches. That happened the day before, at a dedication ceremony. There is no reverent silence while tribute is paid to the ancestors who survived the Clotilda’s infamous voyage and to the descendants who preserved their legacy. That happened, beautifully and powerfully, at a separate riverside ceremony a couple of hours earlier. There is no crowd milling around, eager to join in a day of community celebration. That’ll start in just a little while, next door on the grounds of the Hope Community Center.

There’s no line of people standing in the heat, because the tickets come with specific entry times and all today’s tickets have been spoken for. Right around 10 a.m. on Saturday, July 8, a small group gathers on the front porch. The door opens. In they go. A little while later, another group enters to make its way through an exhibition that, among other things, features the first public display of artifacts from the Clotilda.

From here on, it’s business as usual: The Heritage House will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and free to Mobile County residents.

But that won’t be business as usual at all, because the small museum provides a focal point and a point of entry that Africatown has desperately needed, since the confirmed discovery of the Clotilda’s ruins and the release of the award-winning documentary “Descendant” have brought international attention to the community.

And if the specific moment of opening seems understated, there has been plenty of hoopla around it. And people have had many powerful things to say.

Setting the stage

The community group Africatown CHESS (Clean, Healthy, Educated, Safe & Sustainable) is meeting at the Robert L. Hope Community Center on the evening of Monday, June 26, and the opening of the Heritage House is to be the main topic of discussion.

Inside, CHESS leader Joe Womack introduces “our guardian angel,” County Commissioner Merceria Ludgood. Ludgood quickly defers to the people responsible for the Heritage House. Meg McCrummen Fowler, director of the History Museum of Mobile, just as quickly defers to Jennifer Fairley, the manager of the Heritage House, who is introducing herself to the community she will serve.

She’s a Mobile-Prichard native who graduated from Vigor High School and earned a degree in communications from the University of South Alabama, going on to work in broadcast journalism and higher education, she says. She’s not a descendant herself, but she grew up with friends who are. “I’ve always been in and out of Africatown,” she says.

“This is not something that a foreigner is coming into,” she says. “I’ve known about the Clotilda for a long time now. … I am a native of this area.”

Fairley and Ludgood dig into nuts-and-bolts concerns about scheduling, traffic, ticketing, parking. There are a lot of moving parts, including efforts to notify Clotilda descendants of previews set up just for them. The message is clear: Organizers have gone to great lengths to prevent a traffic jam or hurt feelings at the opening.

Fairley talks about the way she wants the Heritage House to support the community. She will work to connect visitors with locals who’ve been trained as tour guides, she says. She wants local wares in the gift shop “so that people from all over the world can see what Africatown can create, what you all are doing.” At other museums, the consignment deal will be a 60-40 split, she says. Here it’ll be a 90-10 split.

“I’ve heard that people in the community want resources. This is one,” she says. She’s also also developing a docent program. “If you are a resident of Africatown, you’re a descendant, we want you in the museum talking to people, telling them authentic stories. Your authentic story about what Africatown means to you.”

Womack says that what they’re all talking about is a dream that people have been chasing for decades: “Africatown as a tourist destination.”

“The dream has been realized,” he says. “It’s here.”

A night at the museum

Descendants, Africatown supporters, elected officials and community leaders pack a reception at the History Museum of Mobile on Thursday, July 6. Fowler opens her remarks by recognizing special guests such as Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson. “Tonight we are all guests of the Mobile County Commission,” she says. “So I would ask us to give a great, big, heartfelt, warm thanks to Commissioner Merceria Ludgood, who is at the heart of all of this.”

After the ovation, Fowler continues the theme of gratitude. “The extraordinary thing about this project is how many people and groups have come together year after year after year, and I am deeply grateful to the many people who have trusted the History Museum of Mobile through this project.”

That ranged from the Alabama Historical Commission’s decision to trust the museum with Clotilda artifacts, to “each and every descendant.” “Thank you for trusting the Heritage House with your stories,” she says.

Fowler thanks members of her own staff, including Assistant Curator of Exhibits Lindy Cox, who diligently helped with last-minute preparations while contending with a serious family illness. “I say that because it speaks to the mindset,” Fowler says. “Everyone understands the importance and the urgency of telling these stories.”

“I did the math this afternoon,” Fowler says, “and I estimate that collectively the curatorial team – not the whole staff, just the curators, myself included – have spent collectively about 6,000 hours curating the exhibition.”

Next to take the podium are two descendants of Clotilda survivors, starting with Vernetta Henson.

“Good afternoon my people,” Henson says. “I’m glad you’re here, I’m glad I’m here, most importantly I’m glad our ancestors were here. We commemorate them, we thank them, we thank God for them. And in keeping with their legacy that they left with us, all the things that they taught us to do, let’s not let them die away.”

Jeremy Ellis, president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, follows, and he too opens with praise for Ludgood. “I don’t think you all know how blessed we are to have a servant leader like the commissioner at this moment in time for this very exhibit and for the heritage house,” he says. He thanks Fowler and her staff, praising them for their willingness to listen. He pays tribute to the Africatown Direct Descendants of the Clotilda Inc., a group founded in the 1980s that was a precursor of the Clotilda Descendants Association. “They had this vision years ago,” he says, “but no one would listen. It wasn’t until we found Clotilda that the world opened their ears and started to hear us.”

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Ellis is one of the few present who has seen the Clotilda exhibition in the Heritage House, so he’s in a powerful position to set expectations. His endorsement is unstinting.

“When I tell you that it is the most beautiful, thorough, well-done exhibit that I’ve seen – you all just have no idea,” he says. As he visited it earlier in the day, he says, he thought of the fact that exactly 163 years earlier, his ancestors and their fellow captives were almost at the end of the voyage delivering them into slavery in an alien land. “They had no idea that in 2023 we would be here honoring them, celebrating them, and telling their story, their resiliency, of everything they endured,” he says.

“I had the pleasure of taking my 4-year-old daughter and letting her embrace that moment,” Ellis says. “She’s going to grow up knowing that story. She’s going to grow up telling that story. And she’s going to tell it the way it’s told in that exhibit and the way that we are going to continue to tell that story.”

There are places in the nation where people are trying to rewrite history, to take it away, Ellis said. “We are the memory keepers and it is us, the descendants, who have to protect this story as memory keepers,” he said. “As memory keepers we have the opportunity to tell the story from our own narrative and that’s what we’re going to continue to do and that’s exactly what the Clotilda exhibit does.”

Fairley says she believes the descendants of the Clotilda survivors are bringing forth a new era in Mobile. She wondered what she should say to this audience, knowing it was full of “the people who hold weight in this community.”

“I’m calling upon you to join with the Africatown community. I’m calling upon you to be born for a time such as this,” she says. “Come and fight with us to build this community, to make it something beautiful, to help the people of the community.”

The remarks end. The reception continues.

In the years since the find of the Clotilda was confirmed, there’s been a lot of discussion about preserving and revitalizing Africatown, and a theme has emerged within that discussion. It probably goes much further back. Africatown’s advocates want “a seat at the table,” or “a voice at the table,” as Ludgood has put it. When it comes to development and other issues that impact the fragile residential remainders of their community, they don’t want to be told what the decisions are, they want to be among the decision-makers.

Looking at this gathering, where local dignitaries mingle with advocates, where descendants are accorded the respect their history deserves, an appealing thought occurs. Maybe it’s too optimistic. This is a reception, after all, not a legislative body. But still the thought occurs: This is the table. And look who’s at it.

Dedication and preservation

Friday brings the dedication of the Heritage House. And, among other things, it’s a chance for more people to praise Ludgood. Mobile Councilman William Carroll calls her “the godmother of District 2.” Ludgood herself takes a moment to bring up the late Levon Manzie, Carroll’s predecessor on the Mobile City Council.

“He did not live to see its completion, but it is fitting to remember him today,” says Ludgood, praising Manzie for years of advocacy for Africatown.

Others who make remarks at the dedication include Fowler, Ellis and Mayor Stimpson. The media presence is heavy. Later in the day, some members of the press enjoy a trip to the site of the Clotilda’s wreckage, organized by Visit Mobile and Mobile County.

There’s no ceremony at the site – with storms moving in, the Perdido Queen riverboat doesn’t linger – but there are some special guests on hand, who have some things to say.

Among them is James Delgado, a marine archaeologist who became central to the Clotilda story after journalist Ben Raines’ quest to find the Clotilda singled out a particular site as the ship’s likely resting place. By 2018 Raines had visited the site with researchers from the University of Southern Mississippi, and their initial results were promising. That created public excitement and provided the impetus for the Alabama Historical Commission and partners to mount a more intensive effort.

Delgado led a rigorous effort that catalogued not just a detailed history of the Clotilda itself, but of the entire fleet of Gulf Coast schooners from that era. The goal was to take the details of this wreck – its size, shape, materials, construction methods and more – and try to prove it could not be any other ship. When Delgado and his team finally revealed their peer-reviewed study, the verdict was as ironclad as science could make it.

Scientific efforts continue, but Delgado hasn’t made this trip to Mobile to conduct research or announce any results. Partly he’s here as a self-professed marine archaeology geek. He’s a walking encyclopedia of shipbuilding technology. To him, any piece of a ship is a telltale: How it was constructed speaks volumes about where and when a ship was built. Purely on this level, the Clotilda and other wrecks resting nearby are subjects he finds highly fascinating.

But he also has a personal interest, he says. The Clotilda is a vessel of global historical significance and he’s sure it will be designated a national landmark. He made a promise to the descendant community, he says: Eventually a decision will be made as to whether the ship’s hull can be raised, preserved and displayed, and he is committed to making sure it is made on the basis of the soundest, most complete scientific understanding possible.

In May 2022, researchers spent 10 days at the wreck site, taking samples from the ship and the surrounding mud and water. Delgado says results are still coming in, but the draft report is already an inch and a half thick, or more. It too will be peer-reviewed before the results are publicized.

As he has before, Delgado describes preservation of the hull as a monstrously complex and expensive process. The ship would have to be taken apart down to every nail, so that metal pieces and wood could get the separate treatments they need, and then reassembled. It would then have to be kept in carefully controlled conditions.

Work in May 2022 included pulling numerous trees and pieces of trees off the wreck, Delgado says. “Responsible stewardship, as AHC has exercised it, has meant doing everything to be done to protect the wreck while also trying to figure out what could come next,” he says.

Stacye Hathorn of the Alabama Historical Commission speaks about the state’s oversight. Kamau Sadiki, who has investigated other slave ship wrecks with the organization Diving with a Purpose, speaks about the personal aspect of diving on the Clotilda’s hull. “There’s another dimension to this work that gets very little attention. You can call it a spiritual dimension if you want,” he says. “I’ve got over 1,500 dives, I know a little bit about diving, right? But when I dove on this vessel, all that went out the window.”

Sadiki said he couldn’t make peace with diving on the Clotilda until he composed a prayer to the ancestors who’d been carried aboard it.

He’s followed by Darron Patterson, a past president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, who also brings up the spirits of the past. Twelve million Africans were taken captive to be enslaved, he says, and “two million of them are on the Atlantic Ocean floor.”

“I still can’t get my arms around that,” he says. “What we have now is an opportunity for the ancestors who live in me and my fellow descendants to speak to this world, to this country, and do some things that we need some help with. I hear people all the time say, ‘Oh, we don’t want to talk about this, we don’t want to talk about that. We want to ban these books and this and that, because it’s going to make the little white kids hate themselves.’ No, it’s going to make them hate you. Because they are the ones asking you, ‘Grandaddy were you a part of this? Grandmother, were you a part of this back in the day when you spirited people away from their homes and brought them here for the sake of manufacturing cotton and cutting sugar cane?’ Who the hell does something like that to another human being?

“I’m so happy to have been a sportswriter because I learned teamwork,” says Patterson. “I learned teamwork. And all I know is that if you have the same jersey on, we’re on the same team. I don’t care what color we are. Our jersey happens to be red, white and blue. We’re all on the same team, white [or] black. The spirit of the ancestors has to make a statement in our lives. They make a statement in mine every day. I wake up every day thinking about who I am. I am a proud Yoruban descendant of Kupollee, who was on that ship. And I cannot understand how anybody can ever forget about what these teenagers on that ship went through.”

Patterson chokes up, describing the squalid conditions the captives endured on their two-month voyage. “You cannot do that to a human being,” he says. “And every time I come up this river I think about them in the cargo hold of that ship … and they didn’t know where they were and they said ‘We are all we’ve got.’”

Patterson brings up John Adams’ 1781 warning about the threat that the “vulgar rich” posed to democracy. “Timothy Meaher was a part of the vulgar rich,” he says. “We have people today in Washington, D.C., and all over the place, the vulgar rich, who want to divide us. We cannot let that happen, y’all. It’s going to be the kids who make sure that this country survives. And it’s all because of the spirit of those ancestors that we have a chance. We’re not going to let this happen.”

At the landing

Well before the ceremony known as “The Landing” starts underneath the Africatown Bridge on Saturday morning, it’s clear that a lot has changed in a year.

To get here you put your whole trust in Google Maps, driving to an address that isn’t really an address. You pass industrial sites, wondering if you’re still on a road or whether you’re in some plant’s parking lot. You cross railroad tracks to pull into a grassy area that reaches down to the water’s edge. It’s the place the Clotilda Descendants Association has chosen to mark the arrival of its ancestors, 163 years ago.

In 2022 the group held the ceremony for the second time. A few dozen white-clad descendants participated, and they didn’t have the site to themselves. It’s a no-man’s land underneath a bridge, so of course it’s a fishing spot – and as the descendants paid tribute and set a wreath adrift on the water, a few anglers were going about their business with rods, buckets and lawn chairs.

This time, nobody is fishing. Shuttles are bringing in participants who’ve parked at a more convenient spot. A pavilion shades them from the sun, at least those who can fit under it. As the ceremony is conducted, a white-clad crowd of more than 150 forms a crescent facing the speakers and the water.

Maybe part of the growth is due to the impact of Margaret Brown’s “Descendant,” which has been on Netflix for most of a year now. But in large part it’s because, at the request of the Clotilda Descendants Association, the Heritage House opening has been held to this same date. Putting everything on the same weekend created more impetus for out-of-town descendants to return for family reunions.

As she begins a libation ceremony, Deborah Ferguson says it’s traditional to ask the oldest elder present for permission to proceed. It is given. Then she looks for the youngest child among the descendants. “Can you hold that young one up,” she asks, “so that we can see our future?”

William Green, treasurer of the CDA, delivers a welcoming address.

“It was 163 years ago on July 8, 1860, that our ancestors, 110 in number, arrived on these shores naked, afraid, disoriented, in a foreign land with a foreign language being spoken, and finally, enslaved. We are here to honor them because they did not let their situation and circumstances define and limit them. A few short years after being freed in 1865, they went on to establish a town named in honor of their mother continent, Africatown, with a governance structure. Educated themselves, became citizens, voted, and learned to speak the foreign language. People, let us take inspiration from their accomplishments and never let the world forget.

“Sadly, there are efforts underfoot to ban books in schools telling of our story and our history,” Green continued. “Ban guns, not books. Never let the world forget.”

Later in the program, a series of descendants pay tribute to their ancestors, sharing powerful testimony to the wrongs they suffered and the strength they exhibited. Shirley Roberts, a descendant of Peter Lee and Josephine Lee, weighs in with an evocative account of life in Africatown in bygone days.

“We have fond memories of unity among the family members at 438 Bay Bridge Road,” she says. “We lived on the hill harmoniously together. We went to church together. We played together. We went to school together. The happiness we shared together cannot be communicated. Today we are living a thousand miles apart. But the fifth generation remember good times and we will always cherish and never forget those memories.

“Thanksgiving, Christmas, going from one house to another on the hill. On Saturdays we would all assemble together, according to our ages, for the intake of castor and cod liver oil that was given to us [here she was almost drowned out by affirmative laughter from the audience] by our grandfather to ensure that we were healthy through the winter months, and we did not get a cold. We helped clean the hill. We did it weekly. Our chores, we did that … by noon on Sunday morning. Devotion period led by our grandfather, reciting the 23rd Psalm.

“These great occasions were shared by the entire family,” proclaims Roberts. “Our memories will be cherished and not forgotten. And please remember that a people without knowledge of their past is like a tree without roots.”

Other memories were more bittersweet. William Green, speaking in tribute to Osia and Innie Keeby, said they too had made their homestead on property along Bay Bridge Road “I think [it was] less than 100 yards from here,” he said. “And the descendants lived in that house until 1980 when it was taken by eminent domain to build this very bridge here and extend it along Bay Bridge Road.” Future plans for the roadway, which bisected a neighborhood and destroyed potential historic sites, remain a concern, as the state weighs plans for a new I-10 bridge farther south.

Garry Lumbers, a descendant of Cudjo Lewis, leads off his final tribute with a rousing call: “This is our celebration today. This is our family reunion. We haven’t been together like this in a long time,” he says. “So look over your shoulder, look at everybody, pat yourself on the shoulder and say ‘Thank you.’ This is who we are.”

A long-awaited beginning

A few hours later, Fairley walks in and out of the Heritage House, keeping an eye on the scene. She’s overjoyed, she says. “Not only are the people from this community supporting this initiative, but people from all over the country. I’ve talked to people from Seattle, New York, Detroit, who’s traveled far and wide, and they’re not descendants, they’re just here to witness this opening.”

The previews already have showed her some of the impacts the Heritage House can have on people.

“What I learned is that when it comes to the descendants, the descendants felt a great sense of emotion,” she says. “When it comes to the people of the community, they felt a great sense of pride. And also hope, because they feel like this is the beginning for them. They feel like the Africatown Heritage House is something they thought about for a long time that actually came into existence, so the next thing would be opening up the welcome center, the next thing would be bringing housing to this area.”

The re-establishment of local businesses would be another big step, she says. “Maybe one day there will be a grocery store here, maybe one day there will be a gas station here,” she says. “Things that are in other communities that are lacking here. Hopefully one day soon they will have those things.”

As noon passes, the crowd slowly builds on the grounds of the Hope Center, where attractions at the community day fest include a stage for live entertainment, food trucks, bounce houses for children and more. Among those on the scene is Ludgood, who in the interim has finally toured the exhibition. She’s exhilarated by what Fowler and her staff accomplished, she says: She knew the budget for the exhibition was limited, and she had been afraid it would hold them back.

“They took a little bit of money and did just extraordinary work with it,” she says. “So much of the story I had not thought about, they captured.” She mentions displays of deeds and marriage licenses that illustrate the determination of Africatown’s founders to properly establish their community.

In opening remarks, Thelma Maiben-Owens thanks officials, descendants, elders of the community and others, and she chokes up a little as she mentions Raines, “who made a promise, and kept it, to me, that he would not stop searching until he found Clotilda.”

Master of Ceremonies Kalenski Adams, aka D.J. Dirty Dan, brings Ludgood onto the stage so that she can receive a painting from artist Ty Tover. “This is a momentous moment,” says Tover. “I wanted to present this, this is called ‘Community.’”

“Are you ready?” Adams asked Ludgood.

“Ready for what?” says Ludgood, who, unlike many elected officials, seems averse to taking the microphone he’s holding out.

“We’re ‘bout to get this party started,” says Adams. “Today is going to be a great day. It’s a celebration.”

And that it is. A celebration many years in the making.