Contributions africanamericans had made, so i think this is something we could do in mobile and do it well. He started looking around the city for someone to take on the opportunity of a challenge just depending upon the perspective they looked at it from. After nine months of searching, he found a young lady that said, i will take on the opportunity. Her name was Dora Franklin finley. Dora was my double first cousin. Thats another tour. We wont take that one today, but she accepted the opportunity. She spent five years of her life doing research on places that africanamericans had made significant contributions to the city of mobile. When she finishes, she had 39 locations throughout the city. We will visit about 20 of those today. I took you on all of them. I have to find out how you like your fish. Fried or broiled . Do you like your steak medium or well . Because it will take a probably about six hours. She set it up so we should be able to get through it in about two hours. I cant hold your attention much longer than that. But when she finished, we started the tour from this location because this is where it started from. It was in 1702 king louis the 14th contracted with two explorers out of quebec, canada. They were the lemoine brothers. Pierre and jean baptiste. He asked them to find a shortcut to new orleans and he wanted information about the Mississippi River for commerce, because it goes all the way up through wisconsin. They set sail and actually ended up in pensacola. Pensacola was occupied by the spanish. They didnt want that war, so they headed west. Our gulf of mexico is about 20 miles south of where we are right now. They took a little too sharp of a turn to the right and ended up in the mobile river. They actually passed through mobile, 27 miles north of here. We refer to it is 27 miles north bluff sometimes. They settled there for nine months. A great flood and an outbreak of yellow fever came about and pushed them to this location where we are now. The first fort is probably about one mile east of here. Ultimately, the fort behind us was established. This is a replica of the original fort. It is done on a 4 5 engineering skill and it is one third the size. This is done in 1976 for the bicentennial celebration of the united states. In 1702 when the city was founded, king louis the 14th being the gracious king he was, he sent a couple more ships. They had females on them. He sent those females over to marry the soldiers so that he could grow the community. A lot of them did marry the soldiers. The community did grow. We know now that they had nicknames. Some people called them caskets because they brought yellow fever here and some of the soldiers died. We found out also that they were often from the Roman Catholic church and their chaperones were nuns, but they married the soldiers and the community did grow. History is history, so we tell the story as it is. There were other ships that come. Some came from the Dominican Republic. Those ships had concubines on it. During this time, mobile being a seaport town, it was kind of loose and the wives would allow their husbands to have companions. A lot of the ladies that came from the Dominican Republic were companions. They had children. Those children today, we refer to them as creoles. An africanamerican mom with a french and spanish dad, that offspring is creole. As you know, we have a lot of creoles in this area and in louisiana. A littlealk about that later, but we wanted to give you some foundation as to the city and how we got started, and the fact that our city was in these walls that we see. That was the city. The moment you walked outside of those walls, you were out of the city. This is where we started. Now we will proceed to our first marker, the first historical marker, which is slave market. The lemoine brothers founded mobile in 1702. New orleans was not founded until 1718. They had the first parade here in 1703. When Pierre Lemoine founded new orleans, he took that celebration from mobile and started it in new orleans. This was a very diverse part. That guy looks like louis armstrong, he represents the bands that play in the parade. And then there is the africanamerican king and queen statue as well. That is how we stay with the birthplace of mardi gras, because we were founded 16 years before new orleans. I add my little footnote to say we are glad people think new orleans is the place to go, so we can have fun and all those crazy people can go to new orleans. [laughter] this is the Central Business district area. When i was growing up, we had no malls. This is where you would buy everything from socks to a hat. Now that has changed. Its all restaurants, clubs, entertainment, legal offices, hotels. The nature of the business changed. We will talk about that briefly, how that changed in the late 1980s. Ok, so this is the site of the slave market where illegally kidnapped individuals were auctioned off in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s. Keep in mind we are two blocks away from the water. None of these buildings were here. The ships would come in and dock at the water and they would have traveled for two to three months from africa with the illegally kidnapped individuals in the bottom of the ship. Thats where they ate, thats where they slept, thats where they used the bathroom. Environmentally, it was unbelievable. In fact, they say the stench was so bad that no one would go below to check on them. They would be shackled and chained in a slot about the size of a casket. If someone got sick or someone died, they stayed in that position until they got here. Eric knows he would not have been able to survive in that environment. Those had to be some very strongwilled individuals to make that journey. Once they got here, they would bring them over to this site. Naked in shackles and chains. They would keep them in this building for maybe a week to remove any of their bracelet marks from the shackles and the chains, get them looking somewhat healthy, and on a day like today, they would have passed out flyers that there would be an auction at john ragland slave market. Individuals would be out here, maybe eating popcorn, drinking water, milling around, and then an auctioneer would step out of those black doors behind us with one of the illegally kidnapped individuals. Then they would start the auction. Black male, 18 years old, good health, all teeth. They would start the auction. 100, 200. Sometimes they would sell for as much as 1000. This was the First Time Ever of this type of slavery. Slavery had existed for centuries. Indentured servants. But this was something new. It was called chattel slavery. Chattel slavery is you were purchased like a piece of furniture or an animal and you became the property of that individual for the rest of your life. These individuals had no idea they were on a different continent. They didnt know where they were. They knew that they would be separated from their wife or husband and children. That in itself was creating a lot of anxiety and was very inhumane. Thats what took place here. Hopefully we will never, ever see anything like that again. But thats what transpired here at this location. The john ragland slave market. The building, just through deterioration over time, and then this is the site of alabama powers, so when they purchased it, they did leave the concept of two doors and a platform. The two doors and the platform that you see, that is where they would lead them out to the auctions. The next stop is africatown. So we are now traveling on land the same route that the last illegal ship with kidnapped individuals to come into the u. S. In 1860. It was the result of a bet made by a local rich, White Plantation owner by the name of Timothy Meaher. That bet was he could bring in 100 illegally kidnapped individuals in 1860. Keep in mind, in 1860, slavery was still legal, but the slave act of 1808 had passed and it said it was against the law to import anyone from outside of the u. S. , and if you were caught and found guilty by a jury, you could be hung. Timothy meaher took this because he thought alabama would secede from the union and slavery would be legal again. He goes out and hires a guy by the name of captain foster. Captain foster had an 86 foot schooner called the clotilda. We will talk about the clotilda a little further in the tour. And then captain foster hires 11 crewmen and they leave out of the port of mobile with 75 yards of lumber on top of the clotilda. I want to show you something over here. This building closed about a year ago. Do you see who it is for lease by . Ml meaher. There is a for lease sign on the side of the building. That is the same family. Fourth or fifth generation that owned that property, and they up from mobile to 27 miles from here. Actually around 25 million worth of property. Most of it for lease. Very seldom do they sell it. We are going to talk about that as well. I wanted to point that out because we are right in downtown mobile. Captain foster leaves out the port of mobile on the clotilda with 11 crewmen and the lumber. It looked normal when he left out of the port to the custom agents as if he was going to houston or south america to sell lumber. Alabama was known as a forestry state and still is. Instead, what they did on the way to africa, they built 130 slots underneath the boat to house the individuals that they were going to bring back from africa. Captain foster gets from africa and he gets to the country called the kingdom of dahomey. Today if we were to google that, it is the country of benin. First thing he does is he gets an interpreter. The interpreter takes them to a warehouse. There were 400 naked individuals. 4000 naked individuals in that warehouse. Captain foster was somewhat shrewd. He said to the interpreter the , bet was for 100, but i need 130 in case some of them die, if i have to kill some, or if they commit suicide. I want to make sure Timothy Meaher wins that bet. He tells the interpreter to get individuals from four or five different tribes so that way, he would have less of a chance of a mutiny upon return because they did not speak the same language. And then he said for every man, get me a woman. For every little boy, get me a little girl. I want to point out if you look over to the right, you will see a bridge suspended like a ship. A two mast ship. The clotilda was a two mast ship. That bridge was constructed in 1995. Prior to that bridge, we had a little two lane bridge that would take us to the Eastern Shore. It crosses the mobile river. Captain foster is at the dock in the kingdom of dahomey, in the process of leaving, and some of the enslavers started to retrieve some of the individuals they had sold them and captain foster had to leave in a hurry. He actually left about 20. So hes returning with 110 illegally kidnapped individuals. Somebody leaked to the custom agents on the docks that someone was trying to sneak in 100 illegally kidnapped individuals, so they were on the lookout for the clotilda. And the clotilda was a very uniquely designed vessel because it could travel and navigate in the Atlantic Ocean as well as in local bays where the water is shallow. So they had an idea of which vessel they were looking for. Timothy meaher, someone alerted him that authorities were looking out for the clotilda. He sent a paddleboat in the gulf of mexico to meet the clotilda, and when it did, they took those 110 individuals from the clotilda to the paddleboat and hid them in the cane break, and they snuck in during the middle of the night, and they all got off right below that bridge, shackled and chained and naked. They then brought in the and ita by towboat nine miles north of that bridge and set it afire. The reason they did that is because they said the stench was so bad it would have been impossible to clean it up and would have been evidence that is the boat those individuals came in on. During this short period of time, Timothy Meaher and captain foster were actually arrested and there was a federal case assigned to it, but they never were prosecuted because they could not find the clotilda. One third of those individuals that were on the vessel ended up in selma, alabama with one of Timothy Meahers brothers and associates, and one third of them stayed here in this community, and then there was a third scattered all over this area. 1861, not long after, the war breaks out. When the civil war breaks out, those customs agents leave mobile because it was a confederate hotbed and they knew their lives would not be worth a nickel. As a result, Timothy Meaher and captain foster were never prosecuted. Those individuals, they say, we dont know where they came from. They just appeared because they realized if they claimed them and if they were found guilty, they could be hung. 1863, the emancipation proclamation was signed. When it was signed, it freed all the slaves in the 10 confederate states. Abe lincoln, being president , was very astute. He knew that the next president could rescind the emancipation proclamation because it was an executive order. We know what some of the current president s have done to executive orders. They would resend it. Rescind it. Then most africanamericans could be slaves again so he vigorously worked to get the 13th amendment passed. Ultimately it was passed, and of course we are entering africatown now. When the 13th amendment was passed, of course, abe lincoln had been assassinated. But when it did pass, it abolished slavery throughout the united states. When that happened, most of the individuals that were on the clotilda, they came back to this area, because they said, if we can get back to where we got off of that ship, we can get back home. Thats all they wanted to do, get back to africa. So they came back to this area. There was one gentleman that could always bring focus out of chaos. His american name was cudjoe lewis. His american neighbors couldnt pronounce his name so they named him cudjoe lewis. That means monday morning. So they went to him and said, listen, we want to get back home. We want you to negotiate with Timothy Meaher and negotiate. Course,thy meaher, of he said, i have just the deal for you all. You work for me and you will earn enough money to go back home. It was like presharecropper days. Every friday when it went to get paid, that money went to food, clothing, and shelter. They never had discretionary money. They came to the resolve they were just have to stay in this community. They did not understand the language, the customs. But they made a way out of no way. They brought their customs, their culture to this community and they said this is our africatown and that is how it got its name. Zip code wise, it is a part of mobile. Its about a 12. 5 square mile area, and colloquially, there are three or four different communities out here. Theres plateau, magazine point, the hill, lewis quarters. They are all a part of africatown. So they ended up staying in this community. I tell you, i stopped right here, because about 18 months ago, one of our local journalists was out in the delta looking for the clotilda and fishing. It was in january. So the tide was low. He saw the bow of a boat sticking up and he said, i think thats the clotilda. We have been looking for it for 160 years. The meaher family said it never existed. They didnt know what happened to it. Well, when the journalist said this is it, we got attention from all over the world. National geographic picked up this story. They sent in one of their lead editors. He came in and in a short period of time, they said no, its not the clotilda. During that brief period of time, the community was awarded a 3. 5 million grant. That grant is to establish a Welcome Center. It could be right where we are today. Thats kind of where i stopped at this point. That Welcome Center hopefully will be Something Like an imax theater that will give us a view of the life of the countries these individuals came from. It would give us a place to have this history preserved for these individuals that came here 160 years ago. During that time, National Geographic also financed nine divers to come into mobile to go out into the delta. The delta is the second largest in the u. S. Absolutely beautiful. It is pristine. There are just a couple areas out there were the kids go out there on wave runners and have fun, but for the most part, it is in its original state. They go out and they were out there for two weeks, 14 hours a day, looking for the clotilda. Not only did, at the time, they said we found 10 ships, they identified one. The tuscaloosa. They said, we will present a comprehensive report in an open meeting, but not today. And they did, ultimately. They came back nine months later with an open meeting and they said, we found the clotilda, thats it. Its 25 feet under water in sand. We are not sure if we can bring it up. It might disintegrate. That is to be determined. They have engineers right now that are trying to determine if they can bring it up. They did bring up some artifacts. They are doing dna testing on those artifacts. It has been announced that ultimately, they will be on display in one of the museums in the city somewhere. But the most profound thing that took face was the fact that they validated that was the clotilda. There are about 300 fourth and fifth generation descendents living in this community. They were finally able to bring closure that that is the ship their ancestors came on. For 160 years, it has just been a rumor. The meaher family never ever validated and never presented a manifest, and never stated they had anything to do with it. It was always rumored, we dont know where those people came from, they just appeared in the woods in shackles and chains. This was the moment, even though they knew from stories, but the community and nationwide, it was always a rumor and not validated that these individuals came in on the clotilda. That brought closure to these families. We are now at the old Plateau Cemetery established by cudjo cudjoed Joe Lewis Lewis and descendents of the clotilda. When doris started the tour, this area looked like what we see over to the left. You could not get in here. The trees and the brush had grown six feet tall. Doris writes a grant the grant was approved. She brings in the college of william and mary, the second Oldest College in the u. S. Initially, the anthropology department, subject to the archaeolog