It's a spiritual sort of thing,
being connected to the natural world,
the natural environment.
For me, it calms me and brings about
a sense of peace and tranquility.
So I wanna stay connected to the water
as much as possible.
During the trade, there was some
40-plus thousand voyages that were made
that involved something like
12,000-plus vessels.
Uh, but the big irony is
that, in archaeology,
we're only aware of about five or six
of those vessels that's been documented.
Each one of those vessels
has a unique story to tell.
This is sort of like
what we had the soil in
from the Makua village in Mozambique.
These are trade beads.
I'm sure you've heard a lot
about trade beads.
You know, traded for a lot of things,
including African bodies.
Uh...
Well, what I do is take these,
and we tuck them in...
We do a little...
Before we dive, we do a little ritual.
Talk about the reason why we're here.
And we have to...
While we're in the water,
we have to listen.
You know, we have to listen
to those ancestral voices
that's trying to direct us
to these shipwrecks.
And so we do a little ritual,
and we keep these with us
until those voices become live again.
And what a disappointment.
A shipwreck discovered
in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta
is not the Clotilda after all.
Experts have several reasons
proving this wasn't the Clotilda...
110 slaves were brought
to the US on the Clotilda...
...taken from what is now Benin
in West Africa...
...after 160 years,
the remains of the last sl*ve ship...
A lot of people think
they won't ever find it.
...Africatown community came
to a meeting to hear why the found ship
was not Clotilda.
I never looked for the wreck site.
I never really cared about the wreck site
because when they told all the stories,
all I needed to hear was we came up
out the water, so that's where I'm at.
If the ship is found,
descendants of its survivors say
it will help call attention to their
ancestors' unique story of survival.
If they do find it,
I would love to touch it.
I would love to see it.
...search group is pretty confident
the Clotilda is on the west side
of Twelvemile Island.
I don't know.
Maybe they'll find it. Maybe they won't.
We may know for sure sometime this week.
And perhaps somewhere in that graveyard,
the Clotilda might be found.
From my earliest childhood,
I was taught about
being a direct descendant.
They didn't refer to us
as direct descendants then.
They referred to us
as one of the Africans.
So we were some of the Africans
that lived in Africatown.
They didn't call it Africatown
at that time.
It was Magazine Point and Plateau.
My grandmother's home house,
where she grew up,
was on South Magazine Road.
So we have the book Barracoon.
Who've all read the book?
Who's all read the book?
I'm listening.
Okay, so three? Four? Five?
I am a direct descendant of Charlie Lewis,
one of the survivors of the Clotilda.
Well, this is Kazoola.
Cudjo, as everybody knows him by.
Charlie, and he is standing
in Lewis's Quarters.
So this is my great-great-great-great
grandfather, six times.
But, um, I don't wanna get in
too much into me. Um...
We can start reading some excerpts
from Cudjo's story.
I know you guys, when you look
at the wording, it's like,
"I know people who talk like this."
And I'm on page 92.
"Ole Charlie, he de oldest one
come from de Affickasoil."
"One Sunday, after my wife left me,
he come wid all de others
dat come across de water and say,
'Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.'"
My name is Zora Neale Hurston,
and I'm gonna sing a song
that I collected in 1935.
I don't remember the man's name
who sung it to me.
The history is like a puzzle
that fit together.
My grandmama, at night,
she'd sit by the fireplace
and tell us stories,
passing it down
so we could tell the stories
the way they would have told them.
Now they call me
the treasure keeper in my family.
I take the role in trying
to keep the history alive
by telling the story
to whoever'll listen.
This is your narrative.
This is your story
as a descendant community.
And so, we definitely gonna,
uh, follow your lead if you will.
For those that don't know me,
my name is Kamau Sadiki.
It's really a pleasure to be back
in this community.
I see some familiar faces.
As it's been said,
I'm with the sl*ve Wrecks Project,
which is, uh, does research
on sl*ve shipwrecks all over the world.
A hundred and fifty-eight years ago,
about 110 souls walked
on this foreign land,
not knowing anything about their future,
knowing that they'll never see
their family again.
And not only did they walk
onto a foreign land,
they walked in the midst of
a country torn apart in the Civil w*r.
So when we locate the vessel,
we'll have a powerful artifact
to help tell that story.
And the Clotilda represents a conduit,
a conduit not only to the past
of that story and this community,
but a conduit to a very powerful future,
a very powerful future for this community.
The way my mother told me
is that Timothy Meaher,
a local businessman,
made a bet that,
after sl*very was abolished,
that he could still bring Africans
into the country.
And he went and got a bunch of Africans
and brought them back here
to the mouth of the Mobile River.
Just let them off the boat
and b*rned the ship to conceal the crime.
What I know of the story
is that it came down to a bet,
and Timothy Meaher said,
"Yeah, we can do this."
And Captain William Foster,
who built the Clotilda,
set sail in April of 1860
and went into Dahomey at the time,
now Benin, captured these individuals,
came back into Mobile Bay,
and was able to, um...
uh, release these people,
sell them to buyers, and enslave them.
Foster was able to take it up the river
and burn it.
What was left
eventually sunk into the river.
That was the whole purpose of burning it,
to keep it from ever being found,
or any documentation of it.
It's slowly been erased.
It's slowly gone away.
And as far as I can remember,
it's never been in history books.
It had always been lore that
that happened up there,
and that those people were descendants
of folks from a sl*ve ship
that sank and b*rned.
But no one broadcasted that,
because they were afraid.
The Africans were told for years,
"Do not repeat this story."
"Don't even mention it
outside of our house,
because you could be k*lled."
You could be lynched
for making that accusation.
You're talking about 1860
up until the 1960s.
That's 100 years
of not being able to say anything.
When you look at stuff from 25 years ago,
it's like going to the graveyard,
because everybody is gone,
and there was a rush
to get them before they went.
Got Henry Williams' son,
but not Henry Williams.
That's a damn shame.
The truth is in the bits and pieces.
Some folklorists are angling towards
being with the historians
and gathering stuff
that reveals some sort of truth.
I myself like when there's chaos,
and it's a big fat lie.
This is, uh, Garry and em's Aunt Martha.
Martha came home to die.
...the neighborhood
in which you were raised.
I was born and reared in Plateau.
It was also called Africatown,
because my mother's grandfather,
Cudjo Kazoola Lewis,
who hailed from West Ghana, Africa,
was there in America.
They came to the US in 1859.
This place was later called,
after being populated,
Africatown proper USA.
Well, what I like about that is
she's so regal.
She's so regal.
And, you know...
But between us all, you know,
between the local historians
and the folklorists, we got the stuff.
We got it, collectively, but...
from the generation that just passed on.
You know, I haven't used a video machine
in a month and Sundays.
All right, here we go.
I'm talking about some of these things
kind of haphazardly,
because it's really not organized
in my mind as I would like to have it.
So Captain Foster, as it was said,
he had a g*n in two hands,
threatened to sh**t anybody
or k*ll anybody
who attempted to leave the ship.
Some of the people
were carried to Plateau,
some were carried to Selma,
and some to another county in Alabama.
We always said
we talk about it among ourselves,
but we couldn't talk about it openly.
That's why the history
didn't get widespread.
"First, dey ‘vide us wid some clothes,
den dey keer us up de Alabama River
and hide us in de swamp."
"Tim Meaher, he tookee thirty-two of us."
"Cap'n Bill Foster,
he tookee de eight couples."
"Some dey sell up de river,
and Jim Meaher, he gittee the rest."
In these stories,
there's so much that's been forgotten.
But it's important to bring them back
and to remember.
It's so critical to just being human,
being whole again.
Particularly on sl*ve vessels.
You know, they have stories to tell.
Not just the shackles,
you know, but the cooking pot.
Maybe it's the beads
that some of the Africans
might have taken with them,
just trying to hold on to something
that was part of their culture
and their heritage.
All these things tell incredible stories.
Get a dish down to put these on.
These are
good pancake substitutes too.
No,
this is a cornbread substitute.
No, I'm telling you...
I would feel a completeness.
I would feel like I had been made whole
if I could connect back
past my grandmother.
See where the ship is,
see what it looked like,
see what the conditions were on it.
It's like you keep searching,
and you're searching, and you're saying,
"Something is missing.
Something is missing."
It's kind of like an adopted child.
It keeps searching for that birth mother,
keeps searching for that birth mother.
Well, that's... In my inner soul,
I'm searching for my ancestry.
And if I could put my finger
on any part of it,
I would feel more complete.
Put it on the table.
To find the ship
would be vitally important.
What the ship does
is give the rest of the world...
the evidence that it took place.
There's a story there worth sharing
with the whole world,
and I would love to find the ship
to enshrine it, but...
I don't need the proof.
I've lived with the proof all of my life.
Just about every person
that was on that ship,
I could tell you where they lived
in this community.
Cudjo Lewis and Pollee Allen,
Charlie Lewis, and all these people,
I went to school
with all of their grandkids.
The Civil w*r ended in 1865,
so they were not in a sl*very mode
but about five years,
and so because of that,
they knew more about being free
than being slaves.
The, quote, "slaves" who were already here
were born into that bondage.
They were born into sl*very,
so they didn't know anything
about being free.
...we was trying
to get this house preservated
so that we could keep it as
a historical monument of Lewis's Quarters.
Them Africans
brought a whole new attitude
to the people that were already there.
They created this thriving place.
They were just enough
on the outside of the city
where nobody was gonna mess with them,
and they told their story,
and that story sustained itself
about these people coming
from these places in Africa,
speaking all these languages,
and having a sense of who they were.
That sense of who they were spilled over
into the other folks's sense of who they were,
and they've been holding it down
and fighting ever since.
...was made, so this is our last house that...
That's why I'm a fan of Lorna Woods.
She tells it all. She gives you
all the information you need.
...Gulf Lumber Company put a fence...
That cat went up in your tree?
These are his two children.
That's his wife, and that's their cousin.
This was the pastor
of Union Baptist Church
back when they built the new church in...
Our family came from another continent
and came to Mobile.
Started their own little town,
bought land, and it's still in the family.
And they told us never
to give up the land,
because they found out
that having land gave you a voice here
in Mobile, Alabama.
I don't know
if you can see down there,
but all the way down in the ditch,
you got headstones.
And I noticed as a child
a lot of those headstones
don't got names on them.
So a lot of those people,
they don't even know who they is no more.
But here it is right here. Um...
I remember as a child, I came out here,
the bushes was almost, you know,
tall as the headstone,
and my dad used to make us
push through it, no matter what.
We'd come from the front just like that.
We'd push all the way through.
A lot of nights,
when I go to sleep, I'll talk to him.
I feel like when you have
this type of history,
your ancestors
is gonna always talk to you.
From birth, I spent my whole life
in this graveyard.
With everything that I was taught,
I learned it right here.
Even learning his name, Cudjo,
I learned that in the graveyard.
I didn't get a classroom.
I didn't get a campfire
with my family, no.
I got my daddy walking me through here,
3 or 4 o'clock in the morning
with a cup of gin in his hand,
talking to his son.
And at the end of every conversation,
he'd always tell me,
he'd say, "Son, you know, I'm old,
I'mma get up out of here one day."
"You gotta learn everything."
He always wanted us
to be able to talk to our people.
So any time we heard a ghost story,
that wasn't a ghost story for us.
That was our ancestors talking.
I was actually told
that was why I was born,
was to know this story because he wanted
to pass that knowledge on
to at least one person.
I looked at Cudjo
as the image of my father.
Everything my dad was,
I pictured Cudjo being that.
And I never seen my dad
cry tears for real.
But to hear them tell me
that Cudjo cried, and he cried for days.
It wasn't just a cry. He cried for days.
And everybody that came and asked him
what was wrong?
He just said he missed home.
"The village that these Africans built
after freedom came,
they called African Town."
"The town is now called Plateau, Alabama."
"The new name was bestowed upon it
by the Mobile and Birmingham Railroad,
now a part of the Southern Railroad system
built through the town."
"But still, its dominant tone is Africa."
"With these things already known to me,
I once more sought the ancient house
of the man called Cudjo."
"How does one sleep
with such memories beneath his pillow?"
This is the only existing footage
of Cudjo Lewis,
known as the last survivor
of the Clotilda.
This reel was sh*t in 1928
by the young writer and folklorist
Zora Neale Hurston,
who is also considered to be
the first Black female filmmaker.
Zora worked throughout the Deep South,
collecting Black stories,
dances, and traditions.
She often memorialized the songs
she encountered in her own voice.
♪ I'm a toe-low shaker
From my head on down ♪
♪ Well, you may go
But this will bring you back ♪
She met with Cudjo several times
and carefully transcribed his memories
in his own dialect.
The manuscript recounting his story
she titled Barracoon.
It was meant to be published in 1931,
but instead stayed locked in a vault,
unread by the public until 2018.
We will find the Clotilda, and we will...
Find that boat!
All right, now I'd like
to introduce our new friends here.
We are just so pleased.
National Geographic. Come on up, Fred.
Hello.
Good evening, all.
It's such a pleasure to be here.
I really can't believe it.
This is one of the great untold stories
of American history.
And let me tell you, I'm here to say
we want to tell your story.
We think this is a great story
and, in this way, it has been a really...
Let me put it this way,
a no-brainer situation for us
to work with James Delgado,
perhaps the greatest shipwreck expert
in the United States,
in the world, perhaps,
and his team from SEARCH.
You are in good hands with this team.
Thank you very much.
Hello, everybody, and it's good to see
so many familiar faces.
So we've come now equipped
to do a thorough survey,
and it's an area that, as we have found,
has never been surveyed before.
Everything over on the other side
was looked at and surveyed in the 1990s,
including Bayou Canot.
We also found a manuscript map
done by the coast survey
for the Army Corps of Engineers in 1889.
It showed that they'd been charting
the river in that area
particularly around Twelvemile Island.
They found no wrecks or obstructions
on the other side.
They didn't do much
on this side that we're working on now.
So we're looking at what's basically
the only section of the river
that hasn't been surveyed,
other than farther up north.
But, in particular,
with modern technology,
nobody's looked under it
and particularly under the mud.
I'm glad I'm a part of it.
It's been always an awesome pleasure
to meet you all
and come back to this community.
And what I give, I give from my heart,
and I hope to be of some value
to make this community much, much greater
than when I first came into it,
so thank you, thank you.
I don't want the momentum of the story
to just be focused on the ship.
It's not all about that ship.
I get it, you know.
It'll bring tourism
and all those types of things, but...
How should I say this?
I can care less about the ship.
I know a lot of people
are asking us how we feel.
Ask the family who built the ship.
You know, they were shipbuilders.
How do they feel about it?
In the story, they said they lived
on Telegraph Road.
So I always,
when I'm driving home, envision
that the plantation sat in this area,
because right here,
this concrete is sprayed in red,
and it says Meaher.
It's so funny that the Meahers are like,
they're right here.
All these streets that I grew up on,
Timothy Avenue, Meaher Street.
I could pass by these people
in the grocery store
and wouldn't know them.
Someone taught them well
about not speaking.
Your children are not gonna say anything.
Your grandchildren
are not gonna say anything.
I've never met a family
that can keep their mouth shut like that.
Africatown is completely
surrounded in every direction
by some form of heavy industry.
There was a PCB manufacturer
in Africatown.
There was a lead smelter in Africatown.
There was a DOD
hazardous waste dump in Africatown.
Then you had International Paper Company.
You have waves of chemical refineries
related to the paper industry
and now the oil industry.
This is the existing zoning in Africatown.
All this dark gray is zoned Industrial 2,
the highest, most permissive
industrial zoning afforded by the city.
The vacant land is gray, and you can see
there's quite a bit of vacant land
in the residentially-zoned areas.
When you have so much vacant land,
you have choices to make.
And the purpose of zoning is
to put the right things
in the right place.
If you ask any resident in Africatown,
"Are the things surrounding them
in the right place,
is that the right use?"
they'd say, "No."
The fight over zoning
is a fight over destiny.
And getting to the root
of why those things are there,
who made the decision
to lease their land to those industries
or sell their land to those industries,
that is just as much part of the story
as the Clotilda.
This was downtown Plateau.
Yeah. This was downtown Africatown.
We had everything.
Right there where the sign
is was Craig's Drive-In
and the gas station.
See, it was all...
We had a hotel,
post office, shops, stores.
My house was down here.
Right here. It was right here.
My best friend lived right there,
Nate Haywood.
And I would go across the street.
And you could walk across the street
because even though there was traffic,
you could walk out in the street,
and the car would stop for you.
Reverend Hunter lived there.
The Caffeys lived there. The Haywoods.
On down the way.
All houses, all community.
We would sit out on the porch at night
and just enjoy the evening.
Right there, man.
I used to live right there.
This is the spot for me
where I come to just sit here.
I come sit here all the time.
If I'm not crabbing,
I usually just come pull up and sit here.
A lot of people
that's looking for the Clotilda,
they think it's up this way.
Some people think it's back here,
but a lot of the community people,
they know it's not back here.
They think it's up there.
So, I mean, all our history's here,
and we been having factories around us
our whole life.
Scott Paper Company, all of this.
I mean, what person wants to wake up
knowing they're sitting on historic land,
but they gotta smell
the chemicals from a factory?
To some of my people,
we feel like this is ours,
and we don't want no chemical plants.
We don't want nothing outside
touching what we've got.
Like, if they take this, then it really...
That wipes our history out.
Those are the city taxes.
I'm not... Let me check the date.
That's 1902.
I think this is the oldest document
we have for the property taxes.
This is dated 1874.
I think it may have been
a little later, Pat.
- Oh, okay.
- I think it was.
There's no date there, but I did the math,
so it was around 1900 when that was done.
Okay. It says Lottie Dennison,
native of Africa, aged 62 years.
And with him being born,
in theory, 1830...
It was after emancipation,
and they all had managed
to come together back in Africatown,
what is now Africatown.
And they knew that they were not going
to return to Africa.
There just wasn't a passage,
a way for them to go back.
So Cudjo was chosen
to go and talk with Timothy Meaher
about giving them some land
so they could start a settlement.
"Cap'n Tim Meaher come sit
on de tree Cudjo just choppee down."
"I say, 'Now dis de time for Cudjo
to speak for his people.'"
"We want lan' so much, I almost cry,
and derefore, I stopee work
and lookee at Cap'n Tim."
"He set on de tree chopping splinters
wid his pocket Kn*fe."
"When he doan hear de axe
on de tree no mo',
he look up and see Cudjo standing dere."
"Derefore, he asked me,
'Cudjo, what make you so sad?'"
"I tell him, 'Cap'n Tim,
I grieve for my home.'"
"He say, 'But you got a good home.'"
I'm Joe Womack, and who we have behind me
are members of the Africatown community.
Today, we're here
to tell the pipeline people
and the oil company to stop it.
Anything you have to do
to keep them out, we'll do.
Long-term housing affordability...
Is the water not any good,
and if it's not,
who's supposed to be reporting this?
It looked like snow
when we were on the playground.
So I guess it was the paper
from the paper mill would come.
It would blow over to the school.
So, you know, we would play in it.
You know, just fan it.
But we didn't know.
I mean, we didn't know.
I pastor a church
when we were having funeral after funeral.
My first year, I venture to say
that we had right at 15 to 20 funerals.
You don't have two and three funerals
in the same week on the same day
from the same reason.
That's unheard of.
"Cap'n Tim, you brought us
from our country where we had lan'."
"You made us sl*ve.
Now dey make us free."
"But we ain' got no country,
and we ain' got no lan'."
I sent out a little survey
and asked everybody
if they had anyone that had cancer,
knew anyone that had cancer.
I got over 100 surveys back.
Each one of these has somebody on it.
Some of them got four or five people.
"Why doan you give us
a piece of dis lan'
so we kin buildee ourself a home?"
"Cap'n Tim jump down and say, 'Fool!'"
"'Do you think I'm gonna give you property
on top of property?'"
"'I tookee good kerr of my slaves,
and derefore, I doan owe dem nothin.'"
"'You doan belong to me now.
Why must I give you my land?'"
"Cudjo call the people together
and tell them what Cap'n Tim say."
"Dey say, 'We will buy ourself
a piece of lan'.'"
I was 39 when I was diagnosed.
So...
- Well, he and I both are survivors.
- Yeah. I'm a...
We didn't know that because he was like,
"I went through prostate."
I was like, well, this is where my port.
Yeah. I'm a year and a half
out of prostate cancer. Yeah.
I'll be three years out in July.
The vast majority of land
is owned by the state of Alabama,
but you have
these swaths of land that aren't,
so I wanted to map
the land ownership of these sites.
This tract, for instance,
is owned by Chippewa Lakes.
The Meaher family land
is called Chippewa Lakes.
There's a sign.
That's another one right there.
They're right next to each other.
When you look at the larger Delta map,
everything outlined in this lime green
are tracts that are owned
by Chippewa Lakes.
When you sit with that knowledge,
and you internalize the fact
that the Meahers are leasing to companies
that are contributing
to health complications of the residents,
it's astounding that
the contours of injustice
from 1860 to 2019,
in terms of who is doing harm unto whom,
that those things are still cleavaged
along the same people,
the descendants of the Meahers
and the descendants of the Clotilda.
So if we know anything
about African cosmology,
when you are disconnected
from your ancestors,
if you knew nothing
of your, say, grandmother,
if you're disconnected
from your ancestors,
you're continuously gonna be wandering
through the world lost,
misguided, without direction.
And so, being connected
to your ancestors' past
keeps you connected
and keeps you on the right path,
in a sense.
This is one form of a family heritage
which can be passed on
to your descendants.
Many Black people don't know who they are.
They don't know where they came from.
They don't know who their ancestors were.
And they would like to know.
Now, many of these things
were done on purpose.
They were done so you would never be able
to find out who you were
or find out your ancestry.
But everybody wants to know something
about their ancestors.
What's this? What's this? What's this?
We think it's the marker
for Charlie grave.
And this came out of the graveyard, right?
Yeah.
You know you're on holy ground.
How am I going to define the terms
by which I live?
When you see it transpiring in a place
that's successful, that's a holy spot.
I'm talking about Lewis Quarters
being a place where Charlie Lewis said,
"I'm going to rear my family,
and I'm going to break them off
with a piece of land,
and they're going to have their own land,
and they're going to do their best."
This is my grandmother's brother's house.
They built this by hand...
And, unfortunately,
the tycoons of the lumber business
saw fit to continue
to encroach upon their land.
Now, this is Lewis's Quarters.
And this parcel of land
was bought in 1870.
But it's Lorna Woods and them
who say,
"Wait a second.
We can fight this by telling the story."
All of the descendants from the Clotilda
and all their ancestors...
By the rivers of Babylon.
The fact that they hold a festival
in that space.
The fact that Lorna makes people
touch the relic,
for lack of a better term,
keeps them folks
from completely taking the land.
That's where Charlie was buried,
and his wife, uh, Maggie Lewis,
and, uh, some other siblings
and other uncles and stuff
were buried in that graveyard,
right here, at lot 38.
The lumberyard took part of the graveyard.
We've lived with the trauma.
Some of us have the scars of cancer
that bear witness to the trauma, right?
And we ain't trying to solve it.
I think that's, you know...
Yeah. Gulf Lumber
has encompassed Lewis Quarters.
I'm not really trying to solve that.
Yeah, it's a travesty.
You live with it. You let it loose.
You name it.
And once you name it, then all
the medicinal things start to happen.
Once you name something,
you can tell it what to do.
Zora Neale Hurston d*ed in 1960
in relative obscurity
and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave
in a segregated cemetery
in Eatonville, Florida.
♪ Wake up, bullies ♪
♪ Get on the rock ♪
♪ Ain't quite day, but it's 5 o'clock ♪
Come out from that cover, bullies.
Come out from under that cover.
Unless you want some trouble
with the worker, come on.
Years later, moved by Hurston's work,
the writer Alice Walker
championed its rediscovery.
She also located Hurston's grave
and saw to it that it got
a proper headstone.
Zora Neale Hurston's books
are now on school reading lists
across America.
For Africatown, Barracoon's publication
means that Cudjo's voice
can finally be heard.
We are descendants
of the last sl*ve ship to dock here.
- Right.
- That's our home.
- Those people are gone. It's now us.
- Yeah.
We need to be a part of it.
So the descendants should be the ones
who have the say on what goes on.
I mean, this book came out.
All the stuff that came out,
we haven't did nothing for Plateau.
Plat... Go through Plateau.
I mean, it looks like woods
and stuff out there, man.
- Kern. Excuse me.
- How do you feel?
What's up, Kern?
So all I'm saying is
this is the first time
this group that includes members
from each family
will sit down and be together
and form, for lack of a better word,
a board of directors
for the Descendants Association.
So once we get that in place,
and we start talking about things we need...
We've gotta get a constitution.
We've got all kinds of things to do.
Them people in that cemetery,
you know they count on us? You know that?
- When I found out...
- Do you? Just wait a minute.
I agree. I totally agree.
You know them people over there
in that cemetery, they count on us.
We've been chosen.
I don't know if you know
what I'm talking about.
Because we're not doing this by ourselves.
The ancestors are working.
The ancestors are moving everybody.
If and when that boat gets raised up,
it ain't because, you know,
someone just discovered it.
It's because it was time
for the boat to get raised up.
The boat has been down there
all the time.
It's just the idea of the consequences.
Then the dirty little secrets
that everybody's been hiding,
then they gonna have to be stolen.
See, that's what people don't understand.
It's like, these dirty little secrets.
When you raise that Clotilda... Oh my God.
The archeological work that we do
is like CSI, right?
We get clues and try to help
tell the story and solve this crime.
It takes a lot of money
to do this sort of work,
and there's no treasure chest of gold
on these vessels.
And folks want to forget more so
than remember the sl*ve trade,
but we have to get beyond
the shame and the silence.
I'm an investigative reporter,
and I came out to try and find the ship
because nobody was looking for it.
Um, I'd been here 20 years
and had heard a little bit of the story.
So I went to the Mobile Archives,
and in the papers of William Foster
and Timothy Meaher,
there was a discrepancy.
So Foster said they unloaded the slaves
at Twelvemile Island,
and he set the ship on fire and sunk it.
Twenty years later,
Meaher gave an interview where he said,
"We took the slaves off the ship
and sailed it further north,
up into Bayou Canot and b*rned it."
Well, Meaher was still scared
about being arrested
even 20 years later,
and it was a crime punishable by death.
So, I think Meaher gave that interview
and specifically lied
to lead people to the wrong area
so they wouldn't find the ship.
A lot of influential people
involved in all this, see?
They don't want it to be found.
They don't want it to be found.
So, what do you do?
You play somebody and tell them,
"Oh, it's not there."
"You're wasting your time."
You know? And so, what do you do?
You look where they tell you it's not.
"The last sl*ve ship
was at the end of its voyage."
"The tug avoided the Mobile River."
"As the Clotilda passed
opposite of Mobile,
the clock in the old Spanish tower
struck 11:00,
and the watchman's voice flowed
over the city and across the marsh."
"'Eleven o'clock. All is well.'"
"And the Clotilda was taken directly
to Twelvemile Island,
a lonely, weird place by night."
Hey, this is Joycelyn Davis.
I'm calling all the descendants
to let them know that
they found the Clotilda. We're here.
I just finished a meeting
with the Alabama Historical Commission.
They found the Clotilda.
They found the Clotilda.
They confirmed that it is the ship.
I know it's on the news, but...
- It's going out to the world today.
- Now, we gotta be organized, Joe.
We were talking about that.
We gotta make sure that things are done.
Not just tomorrow, next week,
in ten years. Forever, man. Forever.
I want you to call every...
Yeah, call and tell everybody you know.
I'm getting ready to call Garry now.
I'm trying to get everybody,
all the descendants.
This is Joycelyn.
Joycelyn from Africatown.
The first people to lay hands
on the last American sl*ve ship
in 160 years.
A newspaper reporter,
a man who owns an auto mechanic shop.
We have pictures.
We have proof. We found it.
Ben had some good clues
and went down and found a piece of it.
Not the appropriate thing to do,
I'll just frame it like that.
To mess with
an archaeological site like that.
But, uh, we came back
and did the forensics on that site
because we had already located it
as one of the prime sites,
and that was it.
You know,
and I'm proud of my role in it,
because I know what this is gonna mean
for Africatown, and I think that's so cool.
I remember the very first time
the divers brought some material up
from the Clotilda.
It was a very, um...
moving moment, at least for me.
He brought it on board
and said, "Wow, this is it."
"This is a piece of the Clotilda,
the last vessel that commercialized
and commodified Black bodies in the US,
right here in my hand."
You know?
And we got a whole descendant community,
uh, still very much connected to this.
You know, I think my first thought was...
really, seriously was of Cudjo Lewis
and his desire most of his life
to get back home.
Y'all are gonna have
to turn sideways so you can all fit.
This will be the first sl*ve ship found
off the coast of America.
Yeah. They had never found one
off the coast of America.
- This is a historical moment.
- A memory.
- Right here.
- This is a great memory.
This is history.
I mean, this is real history.
Okay, let's go.
This is something.
You gotta jump on this thing
because if you let it go,
it's going to be gone.
You know, we just found
a great big old dinosaur
nobody ever knew was out there.
So we gotta do the right thing.
So, what is the right thing?
Just to hear those simple words,
"We found it." I got chills.
Being alive today,
to be able to experience this
is just breathtaking.
We've never had, uh...
the opportunity to embrace our history.
It's never been valued.
And so, this is the first instance
where this one group of people
can actually say where they came from.
I have no idea where
my African ancestors came from.
But this is one group that can do that.
And with the sense of pride
that that brings,
the African-American community,
for one time,
can say this is real, this is us.
These people are part of us.
We are part of them.
And we won't have to wonder anymore.
Yes, this actually happened,
and we are validated.
To me, it's the validation
of the African-American community.
On Thursday,
there will be a big press conference
at the community center.
Gonna find out who's been talking
and who's just been talking and jivin'.
The juiciest elements
of how this all develops
will be how and if
the Meaher family themselves
come to participate.
Unlikely as it is, it's unavoidable.
What they, I think,
least want to happen
is to become symbolic sl*ve holders
for all the other unknown sl*ve holders.
But they will inevitably be the avatar
for what it means to be
a silent, complicit responsible party
in the question of reparations.
It's too vivid, too visceral
to pretend like it doesn't exist.
A lot of questions, no doubt.
So the ship lays right here,
kind of from that tree to this one here,
and it's about five or six feet
off the bank.
It makes a lot of sense because,
supposedly, they b*rned it at anchor,
so it would have been anchored right here
where they could have easily moved
everybody off of it into the woods.
And then the captives, they watched the ship
that had just brought them
from Africa lit on fire.
And then their captors
left them here in the swamp.
And they were here for two weeks
until they were split up into three groups
and put on three different plantations.
The most unusual thing
about figuring out it was right there
was this red marker right over there
that has the Meaher family name on it.
And that clued me in
to go back in the historical record.
And I discovered this entire shoreline
was owned by the Meaher family.
Now if I'm bringing slaves in on a ship,
and I'm worried that I'm being chased
by the government and I need to hide them,
I'm gonna put them on my own property.
You know, their plantation
was right there where the paper mill is,
so it was a piece of cake.
Sit on your front porch,
lean back, smoking a pipe,
and look up the river and laugh
about what's going on. It's right there.
Yeah, they would've been able
to see the fire from their house.
I strongly believe
that what's gonna happen here
is people are gonna start
coming out of the woodworks.
I think the book of secrets
is gonna be opened,
and the truth is gonna be known,
and that's that.
One of the things I love
about being a reporter
is that I have this sort of license
to ask questions.
I have a lot of patience
for digging through public records,
lawsuits, police reports.
Jack Friend was a businessman
who grew up in Mobile.
His father was an executive
at one of the Africatown paper companies.
When the Union vessels
discovered the ruse, it was too late.
Lifelong history buff.
His sort of crowning achievement
as an amateur historian
is a history
of the Battle of Mobile Bay,
but he wanted to have
this dual legacy of that
and finding the Clotilda,
but he never found it.
It is pretty clear that he was going
on intel that he got from the Meahers.
He had an office in the same building
as Gus Meaher Jr.,
and I have a letter where he says,
"Thanks for bringing me into your office
and showing me the spot
where you think the Clotilda is."
There is also a letter
where the sender is AMIII,
and the recipient is AMJR.
It's pretty clear that AMIII
is Augustine Meaher III
and that he was writing it
to his father Augustine Jr.
It's dated November 21st of 1994.
It says, "This date, I received a call
from RV Williams intended for you."
"After speaking with you,
I informed him that you felt the vessel
simply should be left to rest in peace."
"He seemed to agree,
commenting that it would be quite
expensive to raise even a portion of it."
"He reports that he had no trouble
locating the vessel
as the stubs of the foremasts protrude
above the waterline in low water."
So it seems as if they knew
exactly where it was
and intentionally misdirected Jack Friend.
You can never be 100% certain.
Like, who knows what they would say?
Who knows what else might be
in the paper trail
that I haven't found yet even? But, um...
But, yeah, it seems pretty clear
that this is a smoking g*n.
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Mm-hmm ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Mm-hmm ♪
I've been privileged
in my 47-year career
to be able to tell families that
their loved ones have finally been found
and, with tears, share a moment with them.
But never before have I been
as humbled and as privileged as I am
to have been allowed to work on this.
So with that, is it Clotilda?
I believe it is, and so do the team.
And more importantly,
so do several colleagues
around the country and around the world
that we sent this to for peer review.
As it turns out,
it was more or less in a straight line
from where Captain Foster
said he transferred the people
off of Clotilda on that night.
It's sunk in 20 feet of water,
which is exactly what he said.
We pulled the records
of some 1,500 schooners.
What we found was
that there was only one schooner
that was 86 feet long, 23 feet in width,
with a six-foot-eleven depth of hold
and 120 tons, and that was Clotilda.
We worked with
a forensic fire investigator,
crime investigator,
that showed evidence of burnings
with dimpling from burning
and some signs of charcoal.
And we found those generally scattered
around the outlines of the ship's sides,
where, as it b*rned,
those would have fallen into the water
and been extinguished.
We also had heard stories
about the wreck being dynamited.
This wreck does show the signs
of having been dynamited.
Some of the planks
were more freshly broken.
And so, to that end,
I have a sense that this wreck
has not ever been completely lost,
at least to some.
Maybe they didn't know
what its identity was,
but there are signs of disturbance
on the wreck,
and this looked deliberate,
and it was the signs of blasting.
So the other day, I know,
and I was eager to shout out Ben,
because he was thinking
when he'd gone there
that he was the first to touch it.
Well, as it turns out, I was wrong.
Somebody touched it decades ago
when they tried to blow it up.
It's one thing, as I've known,
to study history.
It's another thing
to have grown up knowing history,
particularly of your own family.
It's yet another to touch it
and to see it physically there before you.
Jim worked very closely with our artists
at National Geographic
to create a wonderful illustration
of that fateful voyage.
Take a look at this.
I wouldn't necessarily term it wonderful.
This is as close as we think we can come
until further excavation,
but I think this fairly
accurately represents Clotilda.
And as far as we know, from what
little was said by Captain Foster,
what the conditions were like
for your ancestors.
Now that we've established the fact
that this was an illegal operation,
a crime was perpetrated
against our people,
the pain and suffering
that my people have had to endure
throughout this whole process
is a tremendous burden for us
to have to deal with.
The hurt is what I'm most concerned about.
We need to be taking care of that.
Some dollars need to come
to the descendants for that.
Some reparations. Something needs to come
to the direct descendants.
My hope is that
your story's now being heard again.
And with the find,
will move things forward
for whatever can be done,
if anything and all that could be done,
for Africatown and the people of it.
And it comes back for me.
I'm just a ship nerd archaeologist...
...and I have done, I think,
what we can do now.
Kamau, would you want to come up
and say anything
since you were actually a diver
in the water, and...
- I had some questions before.
- Oh, absolutely.
Hey.
I've touched the wood of sl*ve vessels,
and I've documented and worked on efforts
of several sl*ve vessels.
Um...
I just got back from Costa Rica
doing some work down there
on a couple of vessels.
And I'm trying to hold it together here.
Um...
It's like... It's like a...
You know, this is a crime
against humanity, right?
This is a crime against humanity,
and we got sufficient evidence to know
that a crime has been committed here.
But there is a lot of pain,
as you can see me being emotional,
and this community
has suffered tremendously.
Amen.
So as we talk about
healing and reconciliation,
there has to be in that discussion
a sense of justice.
How do we frame the question of justice?
You alluded to reparations,
but you all should come up with
what justice means to you.
Now it's time for justice.
Now it's time for justice.
Yes, sir.
A curriculum that will tell about
the history of the last Africans
who came to Mobile in 1859,
preceding the Civil w*r.
Oh, I'm sorry. She was first.
This could be a great tourist exhibit.
You know?
Absolutely. So much potential.
I think it's time
for not only this community,
but the United States as a whole,
to focus on sl*very.
I appreciate what you guys have done,
and I just would like...
as far as me coming up in this community,
me being a part of
the descendants of the Clotilda,
I would like for you guys
to keep us at the table as a community.
Oh, absolutely.
So one thing I would say,
and I'm with
the Smithsonian National Museum
of African American History and Culture.
The one thing I would stress
for everyone in this room is
if you have your family history,
you need to bring it out.
There are several books out right now
that we know of. Um...
The really fascinating one out, to hear it
in Cudjo Lewis's first-person voice,
and Zora Neale Hurston did not edit it,
even though the publishers asked her
to change his dialect, is Barracoon,
because she wanted people
to read in his voice,
and that's why it took so long for it
to be published.
It's really sobering.
It just became real.
Even though this is just a depiction,
this is not a real photograph,
it just really became real.
I could really feel their pain right here.
I feel a connection to those people.
And it breaks my heart. It really just...
I just really grieve for these people
that I don't even know.
I'll go process all this tonight.
I really... I can't stop staring at it.
Yeah.
It's a tremendous tragedy, right?
A very painful tragedy.
And victims tend to be
more forgiving, in a sense,
because they've had that experience
and don't want others to experience it.
- That's a human intuition sort of thing.
- Right.
But in this case, in terms of the trade,
in the history of humans
moving around the world,
there's never been
the forced migration of so many people.
The largest forced migration of humans
in the world,
and the consequences of that,
in terms of the atrocities
and the horrors and so forth.
And so people tend to, in some sense,
wanna forgive and forget so they can heal,
and that forgetting is disguised
as a way to medicate the healing,
you know, by forgetting.
We don't have to think about it, you know?
But, you know, the imbalance of injustice
is still there.
All the Allens
gonna line up back there.
All right. How you feel? I got the sign.
I think a lot of people,
when they talk about reparations,
I think they think that reparations
is gonna be like a stimulus package.
Like all Black people are gonna get
a certain amount of money,
and that's gonna make up for it.
But I have no idea
how it's supposed to work.
I don't know how you decide
that these people who are here today
owe these people
who are here today anything.
This community is not the only community
that has this story.
You know, all these Black people
came over on some ship,
and I still don't know
what my idea of justice is.
As long as Timothy Meaher is not here,
I don't think there's anybody to punish.
So I don't think that there is any justice.
It's one of those things that...
Hmm. I don't think I want to say that.
It kind of feels like...
It kind of feels like, "Oh well."
You know, like,
a lot of people would say, um...
Like, people tell Black people
all the time, you know,
"That was 400 years ago. Get over it."
Um, I don't feel like, "Get over it,"
but I kind of...
When I say, "Oh well,"
it's like, what is there to do about it?
Well, certainly, there's no one
to punish criminally at this point,
because Timothy Meaher is dead and gone.
But civilly,
certainly, there are assets
that he passed along,
um, to his descendants or his estate
that could possibly be directly linked
to, um, these activities.
The way that I look at it
is like this.
The people that actually
committed the crime are dead,
and I don't think you can really pass
a crime on to your descendants.
But we know about the last ship.
We know that they sold slaves
to other people.
And a bootleg of 100 slaves
could gross you like $150,000.
$150,000 gross
was a lot of money back then.
It's a lot of money now.
And see, if my family got to be rich
and is still rich
by doing bootleg sl*very,
you really don't want that.
You know, you're a good steward
in the community.
You don't have anything to do with what
your great-great-great-grandfather did,
but you got the money.
And, uh, somebody may try
to get some reparations from you.
So I wouldn't talk about it either.
We talked about the Clotilda
all our lives.
We heard about the ship.
The ship, the ship, the ship.
My dad would say, "Y'all need to learn.
You need to know. You need to know."
But it wasn't nothing
that I talked to my friends about.
It was just a shameful thing.
Shameful, I mean, you know,
who wants to talk about being captured
and...
...being brought over like that?
Good morning. How are you doing?
Want a flyer? Let me get you a flyer.
We're having a celebration on May 30th
for the finding of the Clotilda ship.
- Oh yeah. I'll be there. No doubt.
- Okay. All right. Okay.
I'm proud of it now.
I mean, I don't have any fear.
I'm not coming to your house.
I'm not coming to your house.
I'm just so proud of my family, and I...
I don't want to say hate, but I just...
I hate that I really wasn't
into it back then,
but I'm glad that I am now
because I need to...
It's time for me to put my boots on
and start doing this thing.
Oh, that's the lumberyard
by Lewis Quarters.
- The Simpsons.
- Gulf Lumber. Mm-hmm.
That's the mayor of the city of Mobile's.
That's their company. Yep.
I assure you that this
is something we do not take lightly,
and we will work to be the best steward.
Bringing welcome on behalf of the city
is Mayor Stimpson.
Thank you, Walter.
In Mobile, we say
we are born to celebrate.
I think I'm on solid ground
when I say this.
There has not been
a bigger celebration in Africatown,
certainly, I don't think in my lifetime.
And so, as the city representatives,
we're here to assure you
that we will do our part
to make sure that
the excitement that we have today
will continue with every step of the way
of what the future is for the Clotilda,
because there is a story to be told.
And as I stand here today,
I want to tell all Mobile
that within our respective hearts,
the healing has begun.
People shy away from sl*very
and what it represents,
so now we can embrace that pain
that sl*very has held over us
for so many years.
I think really, as we absolutely
do not forget the past,
we've gotta cast an eye to the future.
And so I've got a few things that I would
say about that, given the opportunity.
Thank you.
We've gone through our era of segregation.
We've gone through our era of integration.
And now we're back
to an era of completeness.
- Okay.
- Okay, good deal. Okay.
Okay, I'll meet you right there.
My mom says completeness.
Like, what I felt today...
I feel a circle.
Like, I feel we went all the way back
to the beginning.
I'm trying to be joyous about everything,
but I also feel the levels that are
about to allow our history to be taken
the same way our people were taken.
There's a lot going on.
A lot more than meets the eye.
I see people, like, on this level,
like, on my lower level.
I see everybody celebrating,
and I see the upper level here,
and I wanna jump up there
and talk to them.
The people who stand to benefit
from all the tourism, you know?
That's what's happening. And we know that.
I mean, it's fine.
I want the city to benefit, of course,
but I also want, um...
I want us to keep control.
I remember a time that,
as a real estate agent,
I was scared to come in here
to bring people to show properties.
And not only are people coming in here,
like, the city is buying the properties.
That means something.
You know, the community is about to lose,
you know, if they don't get it together.
By the time everybody stops celebrating,
it's going to be too late.
It's going to be another tourist stop
that me, as a descendant, can come visit.
Don't let me forget my glasses.
I would like for us to have
a lot more to do with what it turns into.
I don't want to be a part of it.
I want to be it.
I have no idea how to make that happen.
So, you want to go the way we came?
Bay Bridge Road or Birmingham Street?
Yeah. For the kids.
I've been trying to take care of him
all his life.
Yeah, man, you were impressive on that...
I saw you on the worldwide screen.
Somebody sent that to me
from New York City.
What was I?
They said, "Do you know
the illustrious Mae Jones?"
- Get out of here. Who was I talking to?
- I'm serious. From New York City.
We had an interview with Richard
from New York Times last week, Thursday.
I read the New York Times.
Did you?
Yeah, the first person had you as age 43.
That was in Sunday's paper?
Ah, really?
She told the truth.
Everybody got the agenda and stuff?
I think it's worthwhile to ascertain
when and how Chippewa Lakes
came into its land holdings
and when and how they were sold,
and to whom.
That's relevant information
to the overall history of Africatown,
and that we should know that
just to understand
the fortunes of the slavers
versus the fortunes of the descendants.
I mean, we know stories,
just among our friends.
People that say, "That used to be
my grandmother's plot of land."
"That used to be my uncle's land,
that used to be my grandfather's land."
At some point, it got scooped up
by Chippewa Lakes.
Now, we know that Chippewa Lakes
is the name of the trust
for the Meaher family.
Is there a trust that's been set up to handle
the land for the Stimpsons? That we know of?
If there is,
I don't know the name of it.
Gulf Scotch Lumber
purchased a lot of land at one point.
The contact person for that land
is Fred Stimpson.
Still is on the tax records.
Canfor, Canadian Forestry
purchased Gulf and Scotch Lumber,
so that land might still be held
by the Stimpson family,
or it might be held by Canfor
at this point. I'm not certain.
We just have to make sure that
the people know what's going on
and that the community
can get the best they can
out of this thing.
If done right, it could be
very profitable for everybody.
The Lynching Museum in Montgomery
opened a year ago,
and gross profit surrounding the opening
was over a billion dollars.
- Wow.
- With a B?
With a B. A billion dollars in one year.
So if the thing is done right...
Done right.
I got very little confidence in Mobile.
I tell anybody that.
But I think this community's
going to have a lot to say about it.
- Yeah, we should.
- Gonna be listened to by a lot of people.
You know,
a lot of times when I'm walking,
and I like to walk a lot,
but I think about, in particular,
cities like Montgomery.
What footprints am I walking on
that has walked this path before,
that have not had the privileges I had?
They made it possible for me
to have the privileges I have now.
I'll never know those individuals,
but I know some of them
walked these streets.
The Black community is really
one community.
In particular, in the state Alabama,
when you start talking about Mobile,
and Montgomery, and Selma,
and Birmingham, and Huntsville.
It's all connected because we have had,
in the past, to depend on each other.
Give praise to Jesus. Jesus is Lord.
Sometimes you ask yourself...
people come and they see,
then what do they do?
The real test, a lot of times,
is not in coming.
It's what do you do when you leave.
Unfortunately, too many people say,
"I've been there."
The real question is,
what did you do after you left?
It becomes another form of entertainment.
Most of the people who come here,
I'm sure, have been blessed
beyond imaginations.
But this is just a blip in their lives,
unfortunately. Just a few seconds.
They're not gonna do anything with it.
They're not gonna do anything with it.
So... Anyway.
This is a...
See, this... I'm so ashamed of this, but...
this is a hibiscus.
These four oak trees were planted in 1848,
and these have a city easement.
We can't do anything to the tree
without the city's permission.
And I thought, it's on private property,
but that's the deal.
I lived across the street
from Big Gus Meaher,
and I knew his son, Little Gus.
Older than I am,
but they had a house that was big,
but it wasn't ostentatious,
and their cars were old.
And he had a little greenhouse
in the back.
And he grew these beautiful orchids.
You know, it was
the talk of the neighborhood.
I didn't even think of them
as rich people.
I just thought of them
as eccentric Southern people.
And then we all started hearing
about the Clotilda,
and nobody was surprised
that the Meahers...
That one of the Meahers had done that.
I was thinking that, you know,
I knew my grandparents,
and both my grandfather's grandfather
and my grandmother's grandfather
both owned 100 slaves each.
I didn't do it, but I'm ashamed.
I carry guilt.
You know, we were raised
with the narrative
that our Confederate ancestors
were courageous and dashing.
And we were never taught that
the Confederacy was to maintain sl*very.
We were taught, "But look at General Lee."
The losers generally accept the fact
that they're losers.
They don't name schools
after Josef Mengele
or the n*zi...
Any of the losing causes.
They don't name schools
after the losers' generals.
But in the South, we do.
You know, the lost cause,
but the Confederacy will rise again.
That was mother's milk.
Part of the complexity of growing up
in the South and living in the South
is that's in the back of your head.
"We very sorry to be parted
from one another."
"We cry for home.
We took away from our people."
"We seventy days across
de water from de Affica soil
and now dey part us from one another."
"Derefore, we cry."
"We can't help but cry, so we sing."
"Our grief so heavy
look like we cain stand it."
"I think maybe I die in my sleep
when I dream about my mama."
"Oh, Lord."
I got a couple mixed emotions.
It's just different things I feel.
I'm sitting here,
and I'm walking through the house.
And most of the things I'm feeling is,
why this a historic house?
Like, I am happy I came...
because, I mean, I feel like I walked in,
I have sat on chairs that my ancestors
probably couldn't even sit in,
and they slept in this house.
And... ...it seems like
the pictures in the hallway,
it's like they're just telling me, like,
"You don't belong here.
What you doing here?"
Even as a painting, "You in my house,
and you know you don't belong here."
But right now, just walking through
the door of the house,
when I first opened that door,
that big door outside,
and looked at them paintings on the wall,
you could just tell
this place horrible.
And maybe some good
came out of this place,
but most of it was evil.
Most of it was.
And that's what I feel about this.
Mobile don't wanna let go
of their history.
And as long as they can keep us,
me, my people on our side,
not paying attention to them,
everybody's happy.
I'm glad all you guys
are here this morning.
You're gonna have a great time.
This is the beginning
of something wonderful,
and you are part of that beginning.
You're the first, but you're not the last.
Unfortunately, we have
a very sad statistic in our community
that among young folks,
we're leading other groups
in terms of drowning.
And that can be avoided
simply by learning
some basic skills, right?
And so we're gonna be addressing that
and, hopefully,
as our young folks learn these skills,
begin to become critical thinkers,
make right decisions,
and become proficient in the water.
So if you're a good swimmer,
we're gonna extend that to scuba diving.
And again, not only the world is yours,
the universe is yours.
This is training
with a clear mission in mind, you know?
So to get these young folks back connected
to the water, to the marine environment.
It is hoped that they will connect
to the broader missions
that is particularly around the Clotilda,
um, and they become involved
in that project
in terms of documenting it
and telling that story.
Why would we wanna learn
to scuba dive, anyway?
The ancestral memory has to be restored
and connect them directly back
to that memory.
What other profession
can you be studying as a scuba diver?
Okay. That's fine.
That'll make it on the stage.
That's in the way.
Let's put one on each side.
Yeah, Ted,
I knew you'd get a kick out of that.
And my granddaddy was the head of that.
Tippin' Williams. Tippin' Williams.
Channel 5 wants to interview you
before it gets started, so...
Uh-uh. Not right now.
Lee Sentell from the governor's office.
Nice to meet you. Very nice.
- Darron Patterson.
- Mr. Patterson...
Clotilda Descendants
Association president.
The governor wanted me
to present this new book
about African American history.
Could you tell me about your hat?
My hat is my claim to fame.
New York Mets in 1969
winning the World Series
and catching the last out
in the World Series.
But my heart lies in this community.
For people like Timothy Meaher,
the idea was that
that was his right to do that.
It was his right as a man.
It was his right as a white man.
Historians and divers
have recently discovered
the location of the remains
of the legendary sl*ve ship.
Now, therefore, I, governor of Alabama,
do hereby proclaim
February the 8th, 2020
as Honor the Descendants
of the Clotilda Day.
What's your name?
Robert Lewis.
Okay, so Lewis from the...
This is Michael Foster.
- The descendant of Captain Foster.
- Are you really?
I'm from Cudjo Lewis' descendants.
- Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
Guess who that guy is over there.
No idea.
Introduce yourself to him.
Mike Foster.
Hi, Mike. Nice to meet you.
He's a descendant of the Fosters.
You know, like, William Foster.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
William Foster is my first cousin
four times removed.
I'm Garry Lumbers.
Lumbers. Sorry.
I don't have my hearing aids today.
When Cudjo talked about the twins.
You know the two little girls
that Cudjo talked about?
Mary's my mother.
- Oh, is that right?
- Yeah.
Oh wow. My name's Ben Raines.
Okay, nice to meet you.
It's kind of odd because, you know...
my relative caused all this, you know?
To be able to, um, come here
and be welcomed like this.
My wife was...
I said I wouldn't go
if I wasn't told, Ben, you know.
I've talked to Darron.
So I wouldn't have come down here
if I was gonna walk in that room
and people were gonna start
throwing rocks at me.
If we leave at 7:00,
we'll definitely be back
to the dock by 10:00.
- We going out on the water?
- Yeah. It's the only way to get there.
For real, man?
Yeah, it's in the middle of the swamp.
You gotta go by boat.
That's how I found it.
Oh my God.
Damn, man.
- So, you want to go?
- Yeah. And your first name is...
- Ben.
- Ben. I'm Garry.
- I'm the guy who found the ship.
- Okay. Okay. All right, all right.
Everybody calls me Pow-wow.
- All right.
- Yeah.
Yeah, that's... That's historic. Yeah.
We're gonna run all the way up here.
Gonna go by Gravine Island.
Then we're gonna go across here
and then come down this way to the ship.
Let's see. Can I get you
to get over on this side?
This boat only has one speed, wide open.
Where we are right now
is where the last battle was,
which is not in the State Park,
because the State Park doesn't own it.
The people who own it...
Guess who? The Meahers.
So the Meahers actually own
the last site of the Civil w*r
where colored troops
won the decisive battle.
They came up here at night,
and I think it all happened
probably around 8 o'clock at night.
Because, if he held dinner
on the steamboat until he got there
as his alibi and they say
they ate dinner at nine-something.
Yeah.
I heard so many things
about this ship, man.
I heard that the ship was
somewhere down there and caught on fire,
and they jumped off the ship shackled
and all kinds of stuff like that.
So it was so many myths,
you know, so many...
So, to actually know the whole truth,
I mean, the real truth.
And like, at one time,
we thought there was just
the Keebys and the Allens,
you know, that made it off the ship.
Now I come to find out, you know,
that the whole 110, you know.
You all should talk about, at some point,
even though there were things
that were told that were incorrect,
you should still share stories
with each other.
Because sometimes in those stories,
there's some nuggets of truth.
And someday, someone can investigate
some of those statements that were made.
That's important.
There needs to be a group oral history,
you know, people talking with each other.
And did your family talk about this stuff?
No, we didn't know about it.
Yeah.
So it's kind of a historic moment.
I think the last time
a Foster and a Lewis were here
was that night.
- No, I'm serious.
- Wow.
- Where are you, Darron?
- I'm right here.
- Come on, man. You're a Lewis. Come here.
- And an Allen, I forgot.
All right, so we got an Allen,
a Lewis, and a Foster.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
That's a historic moment.
- Yeah, the last time.
- Yup.
Thank you, Ben. I sure appreciate this.
So I don't know if there's any more
writing on this, but from what I've read,
Cudjo said the way that William Foster
treated them on the boat...
I mean, obviously, the conditions
were unacceptable and degrading,
but it sounded like
he still had some respect for them.
- What he said was, he's a good man.
- Yeah, he said pretty...
But he didn't say that
about Timothy or Burns.
He said the opposite.
In fact, he said Burns was a bad man.
So that's the only statements
I've really seen anything
about William Foster's character
was in terms of what Cudjo said
that they were treated right.
Now maybe there was obviously
a reason for that,
but he didn't have to act that way
towards them.
He didn't have to, and he did, so that's...
Well, I just...
I really liked reading that because,
obviously, you know, he was involved,
but I mean, you know.
It's tough for me
to make a qualitative difference
in how you treat a sl*ve, right?
Good or bad. I mean, you're still a sl*ve.
- Plus, it was his investment. He's gonna...
- Yeah.
Oh, he had an investment. These people...
Some of these people
were gonna be his, so yeah.
Yeah.
A good master, a bad master,
it's equal in my book.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well,
it is a hard... a hard... a hard topic.
It's a hard pill to swallow,
either way you look at it.
Yes, it is.
- How are you doing?
- Hi. I was just gonna look around.
No problem.
So where are
the other Clotilda folks buried?
Right here.
How many are there?
There's actually no exact number
of how many it is.
Like I said, a lot of people
that was buried right here,
they don't have names.
They couldn't afford headstones and stuff,
so a lot of these people's history lost.
So, where's Cudjo Lewis?
- This is it?
- Right here. Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Okay. Cool.
I just read the book, by the way.
What'd you think of it?
God, it's a sad story.
I mean, it's even sad after his death.
I mean, his kids keep dying and stuff.
You know, it's really...
It's a dreadful story.
Well, as a child,
I thought the story was sad.
Now, I... Like I told them,
everything Cudjo stood for, he won
because we're still here.
All of his descendants are still alive.
We might...
Half us last name ain't Lewis,
but he still got people
that's Cudjo Lewis.
So, I mean, I don't get sad
about the stories no more.
Used to make me cry,
but not no more. He won.
- Are you a descendant of...?
- Yes. I'm Emmett Lewis.
- Oh, really? Mike Fitzgerald.
- Yes.
I wrote a history
of emancipation in Mobile.
I'm down here on a research trip.
That's good. I'm happy a lot of people
starting to hear about his story.
Yeah. It's all over the news.
No, it's great.
Okay, cool. Really cool. Thank you.
No problem.
This history will go on.
And I give you my...
This is my prayer
that you love your history enough
that you wanna tell it everywhere you go.
And one of my legacies will be...
Think about how you would want it.
How would you want the story told?
Think like you were curating your story.
And then think about your community
and be like, "Now what do I need to do
to get them galvanized
to think like this?"
This is the Oprah Winfrey Theater,
where we do public programs.
And then straight ahead
is our temporary exhibition,
and we have an exhibit up now
that's off the chain called "World w*r I."
So imagine it like with Cudjo
and those being brought from the interior
and seeing the ocean for the first time.
And then you put images
from the period of forts.
- Forts, forts, forts, forts, forts.
- Wow.
Because we want people to see
this is history in plain sight,
just like Africatown.
So instead of painting this generic sense
of Blackness in America,
"You're Black. You're enslaved."
We looked at what happened
in the beginning
of what became the United States,
because it's the American history
told through
the African American lens, right?
If you look around here, we talk about
if you think Black people laid down
and let life happen to them, we didn't.
This woman, Belinda,
sued after she gained her freedom.
She sued to get back pay
for her labor and won.
- She sued for back pay?
- Yes, and won.
How often do you hear those stories?
That's why what you all are doing
is important for people
to hear these other stories.
Mm-hmm.
It's not just about the brutality.
This is an American story.
What brought this nation into being?
There's human suffering.
There's the power of the human spirit.
Resistance, resilience, survival.
This family, they were enslaved
in South Carolina.
They gained their freedom
at the end of the Civil w*r.
They fought to maintain
their right to vote.
They had a confrontation with the Klan,
k*lled some Klan members,
left, and went to Indian territory.
This man, with his brothers,
his cousin, his father-in-law, his father,
they own 300 acres of land,
a hotel, a bank, a theater,
a chain of department stores,
including a store
that was in Tulsa in 1921
and b*rned down
in the Tulsa Race m*ssacre.
And this family is my family.
- Ah!
- Mm-hmm.
That's my family.
Now you understand why I talk about you.
Oh my goodness!
Wow. Prominent people.
So you can see
I know, to a certain extent,
how you feel when you have this history,
and it's like, "Wow, okay.
So, what do I do with this?"
We, as Black people,
think of this history in a certain way...
- You're right.
- ...but when you connect those dots...
Look at the people watching the film.
They're not all Black.
If this were to happen in Mobile,
would they embrace it
like people here in Washington
and Montgomery...
Montgomery is just a name...
But, Joycelyn, now I know
Mobile has its own unique flavor.
But one thing's for sure. People were like,
"No one wants to hear this history."
And look at all these people who are here.
- So it can happen?
- Yes.
Okay. All right.
So you got a lot of work to do
when you get home.
Yeah.
But you can do it.
It's supposed to be a space
where there's a lot you take in.
And so it allows you
to come in and sit down
and just kind of be
with your thoughts, right?
And reflect on the history.
When you go home, you think about,
for you, what you would like to do.
How we tell the story.
What are the things that you know
your family members...
I hope that it could be appreciated,
like this.
People will come to visit.
Could you imagine, like,
a 200-foot-tall statue
of some figure or object?
It can happen.
It can happen.
We have to think big.
We have to think big.
On behalf of the state of Alabama,
the Mobile County Commission,
and the City of Mobile,
I would like to welcome you
to the groundbreaking ceremony
in Africatown for the new Heritage House.
Breathe in. Breathe out. One more time.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
And so we will do that for a while,
so you get used to breathing underwater.
It's gonna change this place.
You know, Charles has an idea to put
two 20-foot-high African masks
up by the Lee chimney.
One facing that way,
and one facing this way.
So kind of like the St. Louis Arch.
You have no...
There's no doubt where you are
when you see those masks.
I just never knew
that my life would be this exciting now.
Because it's exciting.
I don't know what's gonna happen next.
I'm not supposed to know
what's gonna happen next,
but I can't wait to find out
what happens next. Yeah.
Keep your face down in the water!
Are you afraid to breathe?
No, no. It's very easy.
Do you feel like you're gonna have
a panic att*ck? Like...
Once you get in the water,
everything becomes light.
- Oh, okay.
- You don't have no weight on you at all.
Yeah. You become neutrally buoyant,
and so that means everything is equal.
It's like floating.
I tell my little girls
what Cudjo stood for.
tild... The Clotild...
Yeah, baby.
Daddy, what's this say?
That was the name of the ship, remember?
That's painted on the wall.
They like to hear how Cudjo
played with his granddaughters.
They like to hear the stories about
how every day when Cudjo woke up,
he had a porch full of kids
that was just waiting
to see him come out the door.
♪ Ah, Mobile ♪
♪ Ah, in Alabama ♪
♪ Ah, Fort Myers ♪
♪ Ah, in Florida... ♪
My only fear
is for my people's story not to be told.
That's the Africatown bridge.
That's what it looks like right now.
This is the area underneath that bridge.
This is an illustration
of the things that could be done.
That could be done.
Those are the proposed monuments.
This cane...
A lot of people say spirits
travel through wood and different things
that your family members left you
to remind you of what they been teaching,
you wouldn't forget.
♪ You may leave and go to Halimuhfack ♪
♪ But my slow drag will bring you back ♪
♪ Well, you may go ♪
♪ But this will bring you back ♪
♪ Ah, I've been in the country ♪
♪ But I moved to town ♪
♪ I'm a toe-low shaker
From my head on down ♪
♪ Well, you may go ♪
♪ But this will bring you back ♪
♪ Ah, some folks call me
A toe-low shaker ♪
♪ It's a doggone lie
I'm a backbone breaker ♪
♪ Well, you may go ♪
♪ But this will bring you back ♪
I was in a big crowd,
and I learned it in the evening
during the crowd, and I'm just...
I can't exactly remember
who, uh, who did teach it to me,
but I learned it from the crowd mostly.
♪ Black gal ♪
♪ Keep on grumblin' ♪
♪ New pair of shoes, Lord ♪
♪ A new pair of shoes ♪
♪ I'm going ♪
♪ To buy her ♪
♪ Shoes and stockings ♪
♪ Slippers too, Lord ♪
♪ Slippers too ♪
♪ When I get in Illinois ♪
♪ I'm going to spread the news
About the Florida boys ♪
♪ Shove it over ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you line it? ♪
♪ Shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka ♪
♪ Can't you move it? ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you try? ♪
♪ Eat him up whiskers, he won't shave ♪
♪ Eat him up body lice, he won't bathe ♪
♪ Shove it over ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you line it? ♪
♪ Ah, shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka ♪
♪ Can't you move it? ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you try? ♪
♪ Oh, the rooster chew tobacco
The hen dip snuff ♪
♪ The biddy can't do it
But he struts his stuff ♪
♪ Shove it over ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you line it? ♪
♪ Shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka ♪
♪ Can't you move it? ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you try? ♪
♪ Here come a woman
Walking cross the field ♪
♪ Her mouth exhausting
Like a automobile ♪
♪ Shove it over ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you line it? ♪
♪ Shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka ♪
♪ Can't you move it? ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you try? ♪
♪ The captain got a p*stol ♪
♪ He tried to play bad ♪
♪ But I'm gonna take it
If he makes me mad ♪
♪ Shove it over ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you line it? ♪
♪ Shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka ♪
♪ Can't you move it? ♪
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Can't you try? ♪
- This is again for lining...
- This is a lining rhythm.
Now, where is the movement?
When they say "shaka-lacka-lacka,"
they're getting ready to pull back.
And when they say...
...they've shoved the rail.
Descendant (2022)
Moderator: Maskath3