Africatown efforts to tell the story of America’s last slave ship could eventually draw more tourists than Montgomery has been attracting since the Equal Justice Initiative opened a lynching memorial and museum three years ago, the head of the state’s tourism department said Tuesday.
Lee Sentell, director of the Alabama Department of Tourism, said he believes travelers who “love history” are “anxious” to visit the Mobile area and meet the descendants of the slave ship Clotilda and “absorb their remarkable stories.”
Sentell will lead a workshop hosted by the tourism department from 6-8 p.m. on May 11 or 8-10 a.m. on May 12 at the Robert L. Hope Recreation Center. The theme is “Building Entrepreneurs for the Africatown Community,” and will focus on how people can start their own tour business in the community, or how a passion for storytelling can be utilized by existing tours.
Africatown “can have even better results” in attracting tourists than the Montgomery exhibits, Sentell said.
The Alabama Tourism Department named the EJI’s Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice with its Attraction of the Year award in 2019 after drawing more than 600,000 visitors from across the country in a little more than a year after it opened.
Sentell said that Africatown residents have “a unique advantage over the people in Montgomery” because the Africatown descendants “own their own individual families’ stories.”
He added, “They can interpret and relate to their stories in unique ways that few other African Americans can,” Sentell said. “For decades, the people of Africatown were told their stories weren’t real. With the finding of the ship, their stories were proven true. They can and should honor the stories of their relatives by bringing the stories back to life.”
The workshop will be held in the aftermath of the Mobile City Council’s unanimous approval on Tuesday on spending $250,000 to support the Africatown Heritage House project that is under development adjacent to the Hope Center. The $1.3 million project, which is bankrolled primarily through the Mobile County Commission led by Commissioner Merceria Ludgood, will serve as the first exhibit space within the community dedicated to honoring the Africatown community who were inhabited by the enslaved Africans who survived the illegal transatlantic voyage into the U.S. The slaves were smuggled into the county aboard the Clotilda, arriving in Mobile in 1860.
The schooner was the last known vessel to carry African slaves into the U.S. and was burned and sunk in Mobile Bay before it was found in May 2019. Since then, the community’s profile has been elevated with international attention on preserving the discovery, and an evolving interest in making the area a tourist attraction. CBS profiled the slave ship’s discovery, and the hopes for the community, during a “60 Minutes” episode in November.
“Every step is a good step, it doesn’t matter how large or small at this point,” said Darron Patterson, president of the Clotilda Descendants Association.
Patterson said he was impressed to see how Montgomery, as a city, has embraced the Equal Justice Initiative’s project helping fuel the rise in tourism for Alabama’s capital city.
“When I was in Montgomery a few weeks ago, I came away impressed with how (the city) has embraced it,” said Patterson. “What bothers me now is that I’m having a hard time listening to people around the country doing revisionist history (about) ‘let’s talk about the good parts of slavery.’ There are no good parts of slavery.”
Patterson said he believes Mobile, as a city like Montgomery, will “embrace what is happening even more” as projects begin to take shape.
“They have no choice,” said Patterson. “It’s the history of Mobile.”
Mobile City Council President Levon Manzie, who represents the community, said he believes the Heritage House project – expected to be completed by late summer – will be a “home run” for the city. He said the city’s investment into the project, “is continued evidence and proof of what we’ve been saying is coming to fruition. The investment, time, energy and resources are being spent in the Africatown community and more is to come.”
Related: Africatown museum construction begins. Will tell story of Clotilda slave ship and community
Separate from the Heritage House is a nearly $4 million Welcome Center, funded through RESTORE Act money available to coastal Alabama from legal settlements related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. That facility, with an opening roughly sometime in 2023, will be located across from the Old Plateau Cemetery and will be in the same location where a mobile home once served as Africatown’s previous Welcome Center.
Said Manzie, “They are a unique people, with a unique heritage and a unique story that must be told.”
Dave Clark, president & CEO with Visit Mobile, said the state is collaborating with the city in assisting with the development of water tours, which are expected to begin this summer. The city spent $190,000 on a contract with The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia last year to help develop an immersive water and land tour that will start at the GulfQuest Maritime Museum or Cooper Riverside Park in downtown Mobile.
The tours will include a ferry north up the Spanish River toward Twelve Mile Island in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta to where the hull of the ship was discovered. On board will be trained storytellers who will talk about the ship’s journey that began at a slave port in Benin, Africa.
Clark has said the idea behind the immersive experience is like what visitors have in Montgomery when visiting the lynching museum or the Rosa Parks Museum.
He said that those who host tours in Montgomery will be at the Hope Center to provide their input next week. Among those in attendance, Clark said, is Michelle Browder, who started her own tour business in 2016, and Ann Clemons, who is a tour guide in Montgomery and who has portrayed Rosa Parks for the past 10 years.
“These are two people successful in starting their companies and (who know) that Africatown tourism is an up-and-coming thing,” said Clark.
Sentell said the tour operators in Montgomery have “received international attention” in recent years, helping their businesses grow.
“The world knows all about the Clotilda slave ship being found,” he said. “The residents of Africatown have a unique opportunity to bring not only attention to their sacred hometown, but to attract resources to help revitalize the community that their forebearers created after slavery.”
Related: Search in Africatown: Researchers to look for graves of former slaves and descendants from the Clotilda
Clotilda survivors’ descendants to Mobile: Include us in sharing Africatown’s story with world
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